iio'5'" 



NAPOLEON 



TO MY WIFE 

Georgia Durl^am Watson 



PREFACE 7? 

In this volume the author has made the effort to portray 
Napoleon as he appears to an average man. Archives 
have not been rummaged, new sources of information 
have not been discovered; the author merely claims to have 
used such authorities, , old and new, as are accessible to 
any diligent student. No attempt has been made to give 
a full and detailed account of Napoleon's life or work. 
To do so would have required the labor of a decade, and 
the result would be almost a library. The author has 
tri«^d to give to the great Corsican his proper historical 
position, his true rating as a man and a ruler, —r- together 
with a just estimate of his achievements. 

Thomson, Gborqia, 
Dec. 24. 1901. 



vtt 



CONTENTS 



I. 


Corsica . 


. . 


• 










1 


n. 


Boyhood 












17 


ni. 


LlEUTENAN 


T . . . - . . . 










37 


IV. 


Revolution ..-..-. 










47 


V. 


Returns Home. . - . - . . 










58 


VI. 


First Service ■ . . •. . . . . 










70 


VII. 


At Marseilles- '- . 










86 


vm. 


13th op Vendemiaire . . 










94 


IX. 


The Young Republic 










115 


X. 


Josephine . . . . . 










123 


XI. 


The Army of Italy 












135 


XII. 


Milan . 












148 


XIII. 


Mantua . . 












159 


XIV. 


Campo Formio 












175 


XV. 


Josephine at Milak 












188 


XVI. 


Egypt . . . . 












196 


XVII. 


The Siege of Acr!e 












211 


XVIII. 


The Return to France . 










.•'221 


XIX. 


The Removal of the Council 










. 230 


XX. 


The Fall of the Directory 










242 


XXI. 


First Consul 










. 256 


XXII. 


Marengo .... 










. 275 


XXIII. 


The Code 


Napoleon 


^ 










.294 



X CONTENTS 

CHAPTXB PAGl 

XXIV. Plot and Conspiracy 310 

XXV. Emperor 329 

XXVI. Distribution of Honors 349 

XXVII. Jena ' . . . .355 

XXVIII. Entry into Berlin 363 

XXIX. Warsaw 372 

XXX. Habits and Characteristics .... 386 

XXXI. High-water Mark 412 

XXXII. Spain 425 

XXXIII. Wagram . 435 

XXXIV. The Divorce 450 

XXXV. Moscow . .470 

XXXVI. The Retreat 491 

XXXVII. In Paris Again 502 

XXXVIII. Metternich . . 514 

XXXIX. Dresden and Leipsic 523 

XL. Retreat from Leipsic 543 

XLI. The Frankfort Proposals .... 557 

XLII. The Fall of Paris 571 

XLin. Elba 583 

XLIV. Elba 598 

XLV. Louis XVIH 612 

XL VI. The Return from Elba 628 

XLVII. Reorganization 635 

XLVIIT. Waterloo 647 

XLIX. Waterloo 657 

L. St. Helena . . . . . . . .672 

LL St. Helena . 687 

INDEX 705 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Napoleon. From a portrait by Lassalle . , . Frontispiece 

Napoleon. From an engraving by Tomkins of a drawing 

from life during the campaign in Italy . . . .70 

Letter from Napoleon to General Carteaux, dated 

AT Toulon. In facsimile 80 

Napoleon. From a print in the collection of Mr. W. C. Crane. 
The original engraving by G. Fiesinger, after a miniature 
by Jean-Baptiste-Paulin Guerin. Deposited in the National 
Library, Paris, 1799 ,136 

Letter from Napoleon in Italy to Josephine. In faC'- 

simile 160 

Josephine in 1800. From a pastel by P. P. Prud'hon . . 188 

Napoleon. From the painting by Paul Delaroche entitled 

" General Buonaparte crossing the Alps " . . . . 200 

Napoleon as First Consul, at Malmaison. From a paint- 
ing by J. B. Isabey 256 

Josephine in 1809. From a water-color by Isabey . . . 338 

Maria Louisa. From the portrait by Gerard in the Louvre . 460 

Letter from Napoleon to Countess Walewski, dated 

April 16, 1814. In facsimile 562 

The King of Rome. From the painting by Sir T. Lawrence 690 



( > ; 



NAPOLEON 



CHAPTER I 

pORSICA, an island in the Mediterranean Sea, has an 
extreme width of 52 miles and length of 116. It is 
within easy reach of Italy, France, Spain, Sardinia, and 
the African coast. Within 54 miles lies Tuscany, while 
Genoa is distant but 98, and the French coast at Nice is 
106. Across the island strides a chain of mountains, divid- 
ing it into two nearly equal parts. The slopes of the hills 
are covered with dense forests of gigantic pines and chest- 
nuts, and on their summits rests eternal snow. Down 
from these highlands rapid streams run to the sea. There 
are many beautiful valleys and many fine bays and harbors. 

The population of the island was, in the eighteenth cen- 
tury, about 130,000. The Italian type predominated. In 
religion it was Roman Catholic. 

The history of Corsica has been wonderfully dramatic. 
Peopled originally by the Celts, perhaps, the island has 
been so often war-swept, so often borne down under the 
rush of stronger nations, that the native race almost disap- 
peared. The Greeks from Asia Minor, back in the dim 
ages, seized upon a part of the coast and colonized it. 
Carthage, in her day of greatness, was its mistress ; and 
then came Rome, whose long period of supremacy left its 

B 1 



2 NAPOLEON chap. 

stamp upon the people, bringing as it did multitudes of 
Italians, with their language, customs, and religion. 

After the day of Rome came Germans, Byzantine Greeks, 
Moors, Goths, Vandals, and Longobards. For centuries 
the island was torn by incessant war, the Corsicans doing 
their utmost to keep themselves free from foreign masters. 
The feudal system was fastened upon the struggling people 
by the chiefs of the invaders. The crags were crowned 
with castles, and half-savage feudal lords ruled by the law 
of their own fierce lusts. They waged war upon each other, 
they ground down the native races. Unable to defend 
themselves, miserably poor, but full of desperate courage, 
the Corsicans fled from the coasts to escape the pirate, and 
to the mountains to resist the feudal robber. In their 
distress the peasants found a leader in Sambuccio, who 
organized them into village communities, — a democratic, 
self -ruling confederation. There were no serfs, no slaves, 
in Corsica ; freedom and equality the people claimed and 
fought for ; and under Sambuccio they totally routed the 
barons. 

The great leader died; the barons took up arms again; 
the peasants appealed to the margrave of Tuscany for aid ; 
an army came from Italy, the barons were beaten, and the 
village confederation restored. From a.d. 1020 to a.d. 
1070, Tuscany protected the Corsicans; but the popes, 
having looked upon the land with eyes of desire, claimed 
it for the Church, and, through skilful manipulations (such 
as are common in cases of that kind), the people were per- 
suaded to submit. In the year 1098 Pope Urban II. sold 
the island to Pisa, and for one hundred years Corsica 
remained under the dominion of that republic. 

Genoa, however, envied Pisa this increase of territory, 



1 CORSICA « 

claimed the island for herself, and backed her claim by 
arms. Corsica was rent by the struggle, and the Corsicans 
themselves were divided into hostile camps, one favoring 
Pisa, the other Genoa. 

The leader of the Pisan faction, Guidice della Rocca, 
kept up, for many years, an unequal struggle, showing won- 
derful courage, fertility of resource, rigorous justice, and 
rare clemency. He killed his own nephew for having out- 
raged a female prisoner for whose safety he, Delia Rocca, 
had given his word. Old and blind, this hero was betrayed 
by his bastard son, delivered to the Genoese, and died in a 
wretched Genoese dungeon ; and with his downfall passed 
away the Pisan sovereignty. 

A period of anarchy followed the death of Delia Rocca. 
The barons were unmerciful in their extortions, and the 
people were reduced to extreme misery. After many 
years appeared another valiant patriot of the Rocca race, 
Arrigo della Rocca (1392). He raised the standard of 
revolt, and the people rallied to him. He beat the Geno- 
ese, was proclaimed Count of Corsica, and ruled the land 
for four years. Defeated at length by the Genoese, he 
went to Spain to ask aid. Returning with a small force, he 
routed his enemies and became again master of the island. 
Genoa sent another army, Arrigo della Rocca was poisoned 
(1401), and in the same year Genoa submitted to France. 

Corsica kept up the struggle for independence. Vin- 
centello, nephew of Arrigo della Rocca, was made Count 
of Corsica, and for two years maintained a gallant contest. 
Genoa poured inmore troops, and the resistance was crushed. 
Vincentello left the island. Soon returning with help 
from Aragon, he reconquered the county with the excep- 
tion of the strongholds of Calvi and Bonifaccio. Inspired 



4. NAPOLEON chap. 

by the success of Vincentello, the young king of Aragon, 
Alfonso, came in person with large forces to complete the 
conquest. Calvi was taken, but Bonifaccio resisted all 
efforts. The place was strongly Genoese, and for months 
the endurance of its defenders was desperately heroic. 
Women and children and priests joined with those who 
manned the walls, and all fought together. Spanish cour- 
age was balked, Spanish pride humbled, and Alfonso 
sailed away. Vincentello, bereft of allies, lost ground. 
He gave his own cause a death-blow by abusing a girl 
whose kinsmen rose to avenge the wrong. The guilty 
man and indomitable patriot determined to seek aid once 
more in Spain ; but Genoa captured him at sea, and struck 
off his head on the steps of her ducal palace (1434). 

Then came anarchy in Corsica again. The barons 
fought, the peasants suffered. Law was dead. Only the 
dreaded vendetta ruled — the law of private vengeance. 
So harried were the people by continued feuds, rival con- 
tentions, and miscellaneous tumult, that they met in gen- 
eral assembly and decided to put themselves under the 
protection of the bank of St. George of Genoa. The 
bank agreed to receive this singular deposit (1453). 
The Corsican nobles resisted the bank, and terrible scenes 
followed. Many a proud baron had his head struck off, 
many of them left the country. Aragon favored the 
nobles, and they came back to renew the fight, defeat the 
forces of the bank, and reconquer most of the island. 

In 1464 Francesco Sforza of Milan took Genoa, and 
claimed Corsica as a part of his conquest. The islanders 
preferred Milan to Genoa, and but for an accidental brawl, 
peaceful terms might have been arranged. But the brawl 
occurred, and there was no peace y Years of war, rapine, 



1 CORSICA 13 

down their arms and submit to Genoa. Corsica resisted, 
but w'as overcome by France. In 1741 the French with- 
drew from the island, and almost immediately war again 
raged between Corsican and Genoese. 

In 1748 King Theodore reappeared, bringing munitions 
of wa-r which the island greatly needed. He seems to have 
succecsded in getting the Corsicans to accept his supplies, 
but tiiey showed no inclination to accept himself. Once 
again he departed — to return no more. The gallant, 
generous adventurer went to London, where his creditors 
threw him into prison. The minister, Walpole, opened a 
subscrijotion which secured his release. He died in Eng- 
land, and was buried in St. Anne's churchyard, London, 
December, 1756. 

Peace was concluded between Genoa and Corsica, whose 
privilegeis were restored. For two years quiet reigned. 
Family fjguds then broke out, and the island was thrown 
into conlfusion. Following this came a general rising 
against the Genoese, in which the English and Sardinians 
aided the Corsicans. Genoa applied to France, which 
sent an army. Dismayed by the appearance of the 
French, the island came to terms. Cursay, the com- 
mander of the French, secured for the unfortunate people 
the most favorable treaty they had ever obtained. Dis- 
satisfied with Cursay, the Genoese prevailed on France to 
recall him. Whereupon the Corsicans rose in arms, Gaf- 
fori being their chief. He displayed the genius and the 
courage of Sampiero, met with the success of the earlier 
hero, and like him fell by treachery. Enticed into an 
ambuscade, Gaffori was slain by Corsicans, his own 
brother being one of the assassins. The fall of the leader 
did not dismay the people. They chose other leaders, 



14 NAPOLEON 

and continued the fight. Finally, in July, 1755, the! cele- 
brated Paschal Paoli was chosen commander-in-Oihief. 
At this time he was but twenty-four years old. Well 
educated, mild, firm, clear-headed, and well balancedl, he 
was very much more of a statesman than a warrior. ) His 
first measure, full of wisdom, was the abolition o^ the 
vendetta. 

Mainly by the help of his brother Clemens, jPaoli 
crushed a rival Corsican, Matra, and established himself 
firmly as ruler of the island. Under his administijation 
it flourished and attracted the admiring attention of all 
European liberals. Genoa, quite exhausted, appealed to 
France, but was given little help. As a last resort, 
treachery was tried : Corsican was set against Corsican. 
The Matra family was resorted to, and brothers of him 
who had led the first revolt against Paoli took f:he field 
at thie head of Genoese troops. They were defeated. 

Genoa again turned to France, and on August 6, 1764, 
was signed an agreement by which Corsica was ceded to 
France for four years. French garrisons took" posseseion 
of the few places which Genoa still held. During the four 
years Choiseul, the French minister, prepared the way for 
the annexation of Corsica to France. As ever before, 
there were Corsicans who could be used against Corsica. 
Buttafuoco, a noble of the island, professed himself a con- 
vert to the policy of annexation. He became Choiseul's 
apostle for the conversion of others. So adroitly did he 
work with bribes and other inducements, that Corsica 
was soon divided against herself. A large party declared 
in favor of the incorporation of the island with France. 
In 1768 the Genoese realized that their dominion was gone. 
A bargain was made between two corrupt and despotic 



, • CORSICA 16 

Dowers by which the one sold to the other an island it did 
not own, a people it could not conquer, — an island and a 
peop^le whose government was at that moment a model of 
wisdom, justice, and enlightened progress. Alone of all 
the people of Europe, Corsica enjoyed self-government, 
politf cal and civil freedom, righteous laws, and honest ad- 
minisitration. Commerce, agriculture, manufactures, had 
spruiiig into new life under Paoli's guidance, schools had 
been ' founded, religious toleration decreed, liberty of 
speech and conscience proclaimed. After ages of com- 
bat against awful odds, the heroic people had won free- 
dom, and, by the manner in which it was used, proved 
that th^ey had deserved to win it. Such were the people 
who were bargained for and bought by Choiseul, the min- 
ister of France, at and for the sum of 1400,000. The 
Bourbons had lost to England an empire beyond seas 
— by this act of perfidy and brutality they hoped to 
recover some of their lost grandeur. 

Terrible passions raged in Corsica when this infamous 
bargain became known. The people flew to arms, and 
their wrongs sent a throb of sympathy far into many lands. 
But France sent troops by the tens of thousands ; and while 
the Corsicans accomplished wonders, they could not beat 
foes who outnumbered them so heavily. Paoli was a 
faithful chief, vigilant and brave, but he was no Sampiero. 
His forces were crushed at Ponte Nuovo on June 12, 1769, 
and Corsica laid down her arms. The long chapter was 
ended, and one more wrong triumphant. 

Chief among the painful features of the drama was that 
Buttafuoco and a few other Corsicans took service with 
France, and made war upon their own people. 

Paoli with a band of devoted supporters left the island. 



( 



16 NAPOLEON chap, i 

From Leghorn, through Germany and Holland, his (jour- 
ney was a triumphal progress. Acclaimed by the .l-iber- 
als, honors were showered upon him by the towns through 
which he passed; and in England, where he madq; his 
home, he was welcomed by the people and pensionec i by 
the government. \ 

The French organized their administration without, diffi- 
culty. The Buttafuoco element basked in the warmi^th of 
success and patronage. For a while all was serene. ^Later 
on the French grip tightened, the Corsican time-ho/nored 
privileges were set aside, the old democracy was no Vonger 
the support of a government which relied more an(|i more 
on French soldiers. Power, taken from the villag^e com- 
munities, was placed entirely in the hands of a ^nilitary 
governor and a council of twelve nobles. Fre;nchmen 
filled all the important offices. The seat of government 
was moved from Corte to Bastia and Ajaccio. , The dis- 
content which these changes caused broke into open rebel- 
lion. The French crushed it with savage cruelty. After 
that Corsica was a conquered land, which offered d no fur- 
ther resistance ; but whose people, excepting alv>^ays those 
who had taken part with France, nursed intensely bitter 
feelings against their conquerors. 

Of this fiery, war-worn, deeply wronged people. Napo- 
leon Bonaparte was born ; and it must be remembered 
that before his eyes opened to the light his mother had 
thrilled with all the passions of her people, her feet had 
followed the march, her ears had heard the roar of battle. 
As Dumas finely says, " The new-born child breathed air 
that was hot with civil hates, and the bell which sounded 
his baptism still quivered with the tocsin." 



I" CORSICA 6 

-and universal wretchedness followed. Out of the murk 
appears a valiant figure, Giampolo, taking up with marvel- 
lous tenacity and fortitude the old fight of Corsica against 
oppression. After every defeat, he rose to fight again. 
He never left the field till Corsican rivalry weakened and 
ruined him. Then, defiant to the last, he went the way 
of the outlaw to die in exile. 

Renuccio della Rocca's defection had caused Giampolo 
to flail. After a while Rocca himself led the revolt 
against Genoa, and was overthrown. He left the island, 
but came again, and yet again, to renew the hopeless com- 
bat. Finally his own peasants killed him to put an end 
to the miserable war, there being no other method of 
turning the indomitable man (1511). 

Resistance over, the bank of Genoa governed the island. 
The barons were broken, their castles fell to ruin. The 
common people kept up their local home-rule, enjoyed a 
share in the government, and were in a position much 
better than that of the common people in other parts of 
Europe. But the bank was not satisfied to let matters 
rest there ; a harsh spirit soon became apparent ; and 
the privileges which the people had enjoyed were sup- 
pressed. 

Against this tyranny rose now the strongest leader 
the Corsicans had yet found, Sampiero. Humbly born, 
this man had in his youth sought adventures in foreign 
lands. He had served the House of Medici, and in Flor- 
ence became known for the loftiness and energy of his 
character. Afterward he served King Francis I., of 
France, by whom he was made colonel of the Corsican 
regiment which he had formed. Bayard was his friend, 
and Charles of Bourbon said of him, " In the day of battle 



6 NAPOLEON chap. 

the Corsican colonel is worth ten thousand men " ; just/ 

as another great warrior, Archduke Charles of Austria^ 

said of another great Corsican, serving then in France 

(1814), "Napoleon himself is equal to one hundre.d 

thousand men." ; 

In 1547 Sampiero went back to Corsica to select a wife. 

So well established was his renown that he was given the 

only daughter of the Lord of Ornano, the beautiful V'an- 

nina. The bank of Genoa, alarmed by the presence of 

such a man in the island, threw him into prison. His 

father-in-law, Francesco Ornano, secured his release. 

j 
Genoa, since her delivery from French dominion by 

Andrea Doria, was in league with the Emperor 'of Ger- 
many, with whom the French king and the T^irks were 
at war. Hence it was that Sampiero could indxice France 
and her allies to attack the Genoese in Corsica. In 1553 
came Sampiero, the French, and the Turks ; and all Cor- 
sica, save Calvi and Bonifaccio, fell into the hands of the 
invaders. Bonifaccio was besieged in vain, until, by a 
stratagem, it was taken. Then the Turks, indignant that 
Sampiero would not allow them to plunder the city and 
put all the Genoese to the sword, abandoned the cause, 
and sailed away. Calvi still held out. The Emperor sent 
an army of Germans and Spaniards ; Cosmo de Medici 
also sent troops ; Andrea Doria took command, and the 
French were everywhere beaten. Sampiero quarrelled 
with the incapable French commander, went to France 
to defend himself from false reports, made good his pur- 
pose, then returned to the island, where he became the lion 
of the struggle. He beat the enemy in two pitched bat- 
tles, and kept up a successful contest for six years. Then 
came a crushing blow. By the treaty of Cambray, France 



t CORSICA 7 

agreed with Spain that Corsica should be given back to 
Genoa. 

Under this terrible disaster, Sampiero did not despair. 
Forced to leave the island, he wandered from court to 
court on the continent, seeking aid. For four years he 
w^ent this dreary round, — to France, to Navarre, to Flor- 
enlpe. He even went to Algiers and to Constantinople. 
Du\ring this interval it was that Genoa deceived and en- 
traj^ped Vannina, the wife of the hero. She left her 
home and put herself in the hands of his enemies. One 
of Sanipiero's relatives was fool enough to say to him, " I 
had long expected this." — "And you concealed it !" cried 
Sampiero in a fury, striking his relative to the heart 
with a dagger. Vannina was pursued and caught, Sam- 
piero killed her with his own hand. 

Failing xn his efforts to obtain foreign help, the hero 
came back >to Corsica to make the fight alone (1564). 
With desperate courage he marched from one small vic- 
tory to another until Genoa was thoroughly aroused. An 
army of German and Italian mercenaries was sent over, 
and the command given to an able general, Stephen 
Doria. The war assumed the most sanguinary character. 
Genoa seemed bent on utterly exterminating the Corsi- 
cans and laying waste the entire country. Sampiero rose 
to the crisis ; and while he continued to beseech France 
for aid, he continued to fight with savage ferocity. He 
beat Doria in several encounters, and finally, in the pass 
of Luminada, almost annihilated the enemy. Doria, in 
despair, left the island, and Sampiero remained master of 
the field. With his pitifully small forces he had foiled 
the Spanish fleet, fifteen thousand Spanish soldiers, and 
an army of mercenaries ; and had in succession beaten the 



8 NAPOLEON chap., 

best generals Genoa could send. All this he had donej 
with half -starved, half -armed peasants, whose only strength | 
lay in the inspiration of their patriotism and the uncon-l 
querable spirit of their leader. Few stronger men havqi 
lived and loved, hoped and dared, fought and suffered, 
than this half -savage hero of Corsica. With all the wor^^d 
against him Sampiero fought without fear, as anotl^er 
great Corsican was to do. / 

. In open fight he was not to be crushed : on this his ene- 
mies were agreed, therefore treachery was tried. G/enoa 
bribed some of the Corsican chiefs ; Vannina's cciusins 
were roused to seek revenge ; Vittolo, a trusted li/euten- 
ant, turned against his chief ; and a monk, whop Sam- 
piero could not suspect, joined the conspirator^^. The 
monk delivered forged letters to Sampiero, whic,h led him 
to the ambuscade where his foes lay in wait, ^e fought 
like the lion he was. Wounded in the face, h^ wiped the 
blood out of his eyes with one hand while hi^ sword was 
wielded by the other. Vittolo shot him in the back, and 
the Ornanos rushed upon the dying man, and cut off his 
head (1567). 

The fall of Sampiero created intense satisfaction in 
Genoa, where there were bell-ringings and illuminations. 
In Corsica it aroused the people to renewed exertions; 
but the effort was fitful, for the leader was dead. In 
a great meeting at Orezzo, where three thousand patriots 
wept for the lost hero, they chose his son Alfonso their 
commander-in-chief. 

After a struggle of two years, in which the youth bore 
himself bravely, he made peace and left the country. 
Accompanied by many companions in arms, he went to 
France, formed his followers into a Corsican regiment, 



1 CORSICA 9 

of which Charles the Ninth appointed him colonel. 
Other Corsicans, taking refuge in Rome, formed them- 
selves into the Pope's Corsican guard. 

, Thrown back into the power of Genoa, Corsica suf- 
feired all the ills of the oppressed. Wasted by war, 
famine, plague, misgovernment, a more wretched land 
wa^ not to be found. Deprived of its privileges, drained 
of iks resources, ravaged by Turks and pillaged by Chris- 
tians! it bled also from family feuds. The courts being 
corrup>t, the vendetta raged with fury. In many parts 
of the' country, agriculture and peaceful pursuits were 
abandoijed. And this frightful condition prevailed for 
half a century. 

The Genoese administration became ever more unbear- 
able. A tax of twelve dollars was laid on every hearth. 
The governQrs of the island were invested with the power 
to condemn i o death without legal forms or proceedings. 

One day, a poor old man of Bustancio went to the 
Genoese collector to pay his tax. His money was a 
little short of the amount due — a penny or so. The 
official refused to receive what was offered, and threat- 
ened to punish the old man if he did not pay the full 
amount. The ancient citizen went away grumbling. 
To his neighbors, as he met them, he told his trouble. 
He complained and wept. They sympathized and wept. 
Frenzied by his own wrongs, the old man began to 
denounce the Genoese generally, — their tyranny, cruelty, 
insolence, and oppression. Crowds gathered, the excite- 
ment grew, insurrectionary feelings spread throughout 
the land. Soon the alarm bells were rung, and the war 
trumpet sounded from mountain to mountain. This was 
in October, 1729. 



10 NAPOLEON CHAP. 

A war of forty years ensued. Genoa hired a larg§i 
body of Germans from the Emperor, and eight thousand! 
of these mercenaries landed in Corsica. At first thely 
beat the ill-armed islanders, who marched to battle baii-e 
of feet and head. But in 1732 the Germans were almost 
destroyed in the battle of Calenzala. Genoa called on 
the Emperor for more hirelings. They were sent ; 'but 
before any decisive action had taken place, there ari^ived 
orders from the Emperor to make peace. Corsica! had 
appealed to him against Genoa, and he had decidvjj'd that 
the Corsicans had been wronged. Corsica submitted to 
Genoa, but her ancient privileges were restored, taxes 
were remitted, and other reforms promised. / 

No sooner had the Germans left the island ;than Gen- 
oese and Corsicans fell to fighting again. Under Hya- 
cinth Paoli and Giafferi, the brave islanders |iefeated the 
Genoese, at all points ; and Corsica, for the mjoment, stood 
redeemed. ( 

In 1735 the people held a great meeting at Corte 
and proclaimed their independence. A government was 
organized, and the people were declared to be the only 
source of the laws. 

Genoa exerted all her power to put down the revolt. 
The island was blockaded, troops poured in, the best 
generals were sent. The situation of the Corsicans was 
desperate. They stood in need of almost everything 
requisite to their defence, except brave men. The 
blockade cut off any hope of getting aid from abroad^ 
English sympathizers sent two vessels laden with sup- 
plies, and keen was the joy of the poor islanders. With 
the munitions thus obtained they stormed and took 
Alesia. 



I CORSICA 11 

But their distress was soon extreme again, and the 
struggle hopeless. At this, the darkest hour, came a very 
curious episode. A German adventurer, Theodore de 
Neuhoff, a baron of Westphalia, entering the port with a 
single ship, under the British flag, offered himself to the 
Corsicans as their king. Promises of the most exhilarat- 
ing description he made as to the men, money, munitions 
of war he could bring to Corsican relief. Easily believing 
what was so much to their interest, and perhaps attaching 
too much importance to the three English ships which had 
recently brought them supplies, the Corsican chiefs actu- 
ally accepted Neuhoff for their king. 

The compact between King Theodore and the Corsicans 
was gravely reduced to writing, signed, sealed, sworn to, 
and delivered. Then they all went into the church, held 
solemn religious services, and crowned Theodore with a 
circlet of oak and laurel leaves. Theodore took himself 
seriously, went to work with zeal, appointed high digni- 
taries of the crown, organized a court, created an order 
of knighthood, and acted as if he were a king indeed. He 
marched against the oppressors, fought like a madman, 
gained some advantages, and began to make the situation 
look gloomy to the Genoese. 

Resorting to a detestable plan, they turned loose upon 
the island a band of fifteen hundred bandits, galley-slaves, 
and outlaws. These villains made havoc wherever they 
went. In the meantime, the Corsican chiefs began to be 
impatient about the succors which Theodore had prom- 
ised. Evasions and fresh assurances answered for a while, 
but finally matters reached a crisis. Theodore was told, 
with more or less pointedness, that either the succors must 
come or that he must go. To avoid a storm, he went. 



12 NAPOLEON chap. 

saying that he would soon return with the promised relief. 
Paoli and the other Corsican chiefs realized that in catch- 
ing at the straw this adventurer had held out to them, they 
had made themselves and Corsica ridiculous. They ac- 
cordingly laid heavy blame on Theodore. 

Cardinal Fleury, a good old Christian man, who was at 
this time (1737) minister of France, came forward with a 
proposition to interfere in behalf of Genoa, and reduce the 
Corsicans to submission. Accordingly French troops were 
landed (1738), and the islanders rose en masse to resist. 
Bonfires blazed, bells clanged, war trumpets brayed. The 
whole population ran to arms. The French were in no 
haste to fight, and for six months negotiations dragged 
along. Strange to say, the Corsicans, in their misery, gave 
hostages to the French, and agreed to trust their cause 
to the king of France. At this stage who should enter 
but Theodore ! The indefatigable man had ransacked 
Europe, hunting sympathy for Corsica, and had found it 
where Americans found it in a similar hour of need — in 
Holland. He had managed to bring with him several 
vessels laden with cannon, small arms, powder, lead, 
lances, flints, bombs, and grenades. The Corsican peo- 
ple received him with delight, and carried him in triumph 
to Cervione, where he had been crowned ; but the chiefs 
bore him no good-will, and told him that circumstances 
had changed. Terms must be made with France; Corsica 
could not at this time accept him as king — oaths, religious 
services, and written contract to the contrary notwith- 
standing. Theodore sadly sailed away. 

The appeal to the French king resulted in the treaty of 
Versailles, by whose terms some concessions were made 
to the Corsicans, who were positively commanded to lay 



CHAPTER II 

"I^ROM St. Charles Street you enter on a very small 
square. An elm tree stands before a yellowish gray 
plastered house, with a flat roof and a projecting balcony. 
It has six front windows in each of its three stories, and 
the doors look old and time-worn. On the corner of this 
house is an inscription, Letitia Square. The traveller 
knocks in vain at the door. No voice answers." 

Such is the picture, drawn in 1852, of the Bonaparte 
mansion in Ajaccio. Few tourists go to see it, for Corsica 
lies not in the direct routes of the world's trade or travel. 
Yet it is a house whose story is more fascinating, more 
marvellous, than that of any building which cumbers the 
earth this day. 

We shut our eyes, and we see a picture which is richer 
than the richest page torn from romance. We see a lean, 
sallow, awkward, stunted lad step forth from the door of 
the old house and go forth into the world, with no money 
in his pocket, and no powerful friends to lift him over the 
rough places. He is only nine years old when he leaves 
home, and we see him weep bitterly as he bids his mother 
good-by. We see him at school in France, isolated, 
wretched, unable at first to speak the language, fiercely 
resenting the slights put upon his poverty, his ignorance, 
his family, his country — suffering, but never subdued. 
17 



18 NAPOLEON chap. 

We see him rise against troubles as the eagle breasts the 
storm. We see him lay the better half of the civilized 
world at his feet. We see him bring sisters and brothers 
from the island home, and put crowns on their heads. We 
see him shower millions upon his mother ; and we hear 
him say to his brother on the day he dons the robes of 
empire, " Joseph, suppose father were here — ! " 

'As long as time shall last, the inspiration of the poor 
and the ambitious will be the Ajaccio lawyer's son : not 
Alexander, the born king; not Csesar, the patrician; but 
Napoleon, the moneyless lad from despised Corsica, who 
stormed the high places of the world, and by his own 
colossal strength of character, genius, and industry took 
them ! 

As long as time shall last his name will inspire not only 
the individual, but the masses also. Wherever a people 
have heard enough, read enough, thought enough to feel 
that absolutism in king or priest is wrong ; that special 
privilege in clan or clique is wrong; that monopoly of 
power, patronage, wealth, or opportunity is wrong, there 
the name of Napoleon will be spoken with reverence, 
despot though he became, for in his innermost fibre he was 
a man of the people, crushing to atoms feudalism, caste, 
divine right, and hereditary imposture. 



As early as the year 947 there had been Bonapartes in 
Corsica, for the name of one occurs as witness to a deed 
in that year. There were also Bonapartes in Italy ; and 
men of that name were classed with the nobles of Bologna, 
Treviso, and Florence. It is said that during the civil 
wars of Italy, members of the Bonaparte family took 



II BOYHOOD 19 

refuge in Corsica, and that Napoleon's origin can be v 

traced to this source. It is certain that the Bonapartes 
of Corsica continued to claim kindred with the Italian 
family, and to class themselves as patricians of Italy ; 
and both these claims were recognized. In Corsica they 
ranked with the nobility, a family of importance at 
Ajaccio. 

At the time of the French invasion the representatives 
of the family were Lucien, archdeacon of Ajaccio, and 
Charles Bonaparte, a young man who had been left an 
orphan at the age of fourteen. 

Born in 1746, Charles Bonaparte married, in 1764, 
Letitia Ramolino, a Corsican girl of fifteen. She was 
of good family, and she brought to her husband a 
dowry at least equal to his own estate. Beautiful, high- 
spirited, and intelligent, Madame Letitia knew nothing 
of books, knew little of the manners of polite society, 
and was more of the proud peasant than of the grand 
lady. She did not know how to add up a column of fig- 
ures ; but time was to prove that she possessed judgment, 
common sense, inflexible courage, great loftiness and en- 
ergy of character. Misfortune did not break her spirit, 
and prosperity did not turn her head. She was frugal, 
industrious, strong physically and mentally, " with a 
man's head on a woman's shoulders," as Napoleon said 
of her. 

Charles Bonaparte was studying law in Italy when 
the war between France and Corsica broke out. At the 
call of Paoli, the student dropped his books and came 
home to join in the struggle. He was active and effi- 
cient, one of Paoli's trusted lieutenants. After the battle 
of Ponte Nuovo, realizing that all was lost, he gave in 



20 NAPOLEON chap. 

his submission (May 23, 1769) to the French, and re- 
turned to Ajaccio. 

The policy of the French was to conciliate the leading 
Corsicans, and special attention seems to have been given 
to Charles Bonaparte. His mansion in Ajaccio, noted for 
its hospitality, became the favorite resort of General Mar- 
beuf, the bachelor French governor of the island. With 
an ease which as some have thought indicated suppleness 
or weakness of character, Bonaparte the patriot became 
Bonaparte the courtier. He may have convinced himself 
that incorporation with France was best for Corsica, and 
that his course in making the most out of the new order 
of things was wisdom consistent with patriotism. 

Resistance to France having been crushed, the policy 
of conciliation inaugurated, and the Corsicans encouraged 
to take part in the management of their own affairs, 
subject to France, one might hesitate before condemn- 
ing the course of Charles Bonaparte in Corsica, just as 
we may hesitate between the policies of Kossuth and 
Deak in Hungary, or of Kosciusko and Czartoryski in 
Poland. We may, and do, admire the patriot who resists 
to the death; and, at the same time, respect the citizen 
who fights till conquered, and then makes the best of 
a bad situation. 

In 1765 Madame Letitia Bonaparte gave birth to her 
first child ; in 1767, to her second, both of whom died 
while infants. In 1768 was born Joseph, and on August 
15, 1769, Napoleon.i 

1 During the period of this pregnancy, Corsica was in the storm of 
war ; and Madame Bonaparte, following her husband, was in the midst 
of the sufferings, terrors, and brutalities which such a war creates. 
The air was still electrical with the hot passions of deadly strife when 



11 BOYHOOD 21 

Other children came to the Bonapartes in the years fol- 
lowing, the survivors of these being : Elisa, Lucien, Louis, 
Pauline, Caroline, and Jerome. To support this large 
family, and to live in the hospitable fashion which custom 
required of a man of his rank, Charles Bonaparte found a 
difficult matter, especially as he was a pleasure-loving, ex- 
travagant man whose idea of work seemed to be that of 
a born courtier. He returned to Italy after the peace; 
spent much of his patrimony there ; made the reputation 
of a sociable, intelligent, easy-going gentleman ; and took 
his degree of Doctor of Laws, at Pisa, in November, 
1769. 

It was his misfortune to be cumbered with a mortgaged 
estate and a hereditary lawsuit. Whatever surplus the 
mortgage failed to devour was swallowed by the lawsuit. 
His father had expensively chased this rainbow, pushed 
this hopeless attempt to get justice ; and the steps of the 
father were followed by the son. It was the old story of 
a sinner, sick and therefore repentant ; a priest holding 
the keys to heaven and requiring payment in advance ; a 
craven surrender of estate to purchase the promise of sal- 
vation. Thus the Jesuits got Bonaparte houses and lands, 

the young wife's time came. On the 15th of August, 1769, Madame 
Bonaparte, a devout Catholic, attended service at the church ; but feel- 
ing labor approaching, hastened home, and was barely able to reach her 
room before she was delivered of Napoleon on a rug upon the floor. 

The authority for this statement is Madame Bonaparte herself, who 
gave that account of the matter to the Permons in Paris, on the 18th of 
Brumaire, the day on which the son thus born was struggling for 
supreme power in Prance. 

The story which represents the greatest of men and warriors as having 
come into the world upon a piece of carpet, or tapestry, upon which the 
heroes of the "Iliad" were represented, is a fable, according to the ex- 
press statement made by Madame Bonaparte to the American General 
Lee, in Home, in 1830. 



22 NAPOLEON chap. 

in violation of the terms of an ancestor's will, the lawsuit 
being the effort of the legal heirs to make good the testa- 
ment of the original owner. 

In spite of all they could do, the Bonapartes were never 
able to recover the property, 

Charles Bonaparte, a man of handsome face and figure, 
seems to have had a talent for making friends, for he was 
made assessor to the highest court of Ajaccio, a member of 
the council of Corsican nobles, and later, the representa- 
tive of these nobles to France. With the slender income 
from his wife's estate and that from his own, aided by his 
official earnings, he maintained his family fairly well ; but 
his pretensions and expenditures were so far beyond what 
he was really able to afford that, financially, he was never 
at ease. 

It was the familiar misery of the gentleman who strives 
to gratify a rich man's tastes with a poor man's purse. 
There was his large stone mansion, his landed estate, his 
aristocratic associates, his patent of nobility signed by the 
Duke of Florence ; and yet there was not enough money 
in the house to school the children. 

The widowed mother of Madame Letitia had married a 
second husband, Fesch, a Swiss ex-captain of the Genoese 
service, and by this marriage she had a son, Joseph Fesch, 
known to Napoleonic chronicles as "Uncle Fesch." This 
eleven-year-old uncle taught the young Napoleon the 
alphabet. 

In his sixth year Napoleon was sent to a dame's school. 
For one of the little girls at this school the lad showed 
such a fondness that he was laughed at, and rhymed at, by 
the other boys. 



n BOYHOOD 23 

Napoleon di mezza calzetta 
Fa Varmore a Giacominetta.^ 

The jeers and the rhyme Napoleon answered with sticks 
and stones. 

It is not very apparent that he learned anything here, 
for we are told that it was the Abbe Recco who taught him 
to read; and it was this Abbe whom Napoleon remem- 
bered in his will. As to little Giacominetta, Napoleonic 
chronicles lose her completely, and she takes her place 
among the " dream children " of very primitive poesy. 

Just what sort of a boy Napoleon was at this early period, 
it is next to impossible to say. Perhaps he did not differ 
greatly from other boys of his own age. Probably he was 
more fractious, less inclined to boyish sports, quicker to 
quarrel and fight. But had he never become famous, his 
youthful symptoms would never have been thought to 
indicate anything uncommon either for good or evil. 

At St. Helena, the weary captive amused himself by 
picturing the young Napoleon as the bad boy of the town. 
He quarrelled, he fought, he bit and scratched, he terror- 
ized his brothers and sisters, and so forth. It may be 
true, it may not be ; his mother is reported as saying that 
he was a " perfect imp of a child," but the authority is 
doubtful. 

The Bonaparte family usually spent the summer at a 
small country-seat called Milleli. Its grounds were beau- 
tiful, and there was a glorious view of the sea. A large 
granite rock with a natural cavity, or grotto, offered a cool, 
quiet retreat ; and this is said to have been Napoleon's 
favorite resort. In after years he improved the spot, built 

1 Napoleon with his stockings half ofE 
Makes love to Giacominetta. 



24 NAPOLEON CHAP 

a small summer-house there, and used it for study and 
meditation. 

It is natural to suppose that Napoleon as a child absorbed 
a good deal of Corsican sentiment. His wet-nurse was a 
Corsican peasant, and from her, his parents, his playmates, 
and his school companions he probably heard the story of 
Corsica, her wrongs, her struggles, and her heroes. Delia 
Rocca, Sampiero, Gaffori, and Paoli were names familiar 
to his ears. At a very early age he had all the passions 
of the Corsican patriot. The French were masters, but 
they were hated. While the Bonapartes had accepted 
the situation, they may not have loved it. The very 
servants in the house vented their curses on " those dogs 
of French." 

General Marbeuf, the warm friend of the family, 
encouraged Charles Bonaparte to make the attempt 
to have the children educated at the expense of France. 
In 1776 written application was made for the admis- 
sion of Joseph and Napoleon into the military school 
of Brienne. At that time both the boys were on the 
safe side of the age-limit of ten years. But the authori- 
ties demanded proofs of nobility, — four generations 
thereof, — according to Bourbon law; and before these 
proofs could be put into satisfactory shape, Joseph was 
too old for Brienne. 

Chosen in 1777 by the nobles of Corsica as their deputy 
to France, Charles Bonaparte set out for Versailles in 
1778, taking with him his sons Joseph and Napoleon. 
Joseph Fesch accompanied the party as far as Aix, where 
he was to be given a free education for the priesthood by 
the seminary at that place. Joseph and Napoleon both 
stated in after years that their father visited Florence on 



II . BOYHOOD 25 

the way to France, and was given an honorable reception 
at the ducal court. 

The Bishop of Autun, nephew of General Marbeuf, had 
been interested in behalf of the Bonapartes ; and it was 
at his school that Joseph was to be educated for the 
Church. Napoleon was also placed there till he could 
learn French enough for Brienne. On January 1, 1779, 
therefore, he began his studies. 

The Abbe Chardon, who was his teacher, says that he 
was a boy of thoughtful and gloomy character. " He 
had no playmate and walked about by himself." Very 
naturally. He was a stranger to all the boys, he was in 
a strange country, he could not at first speak the language, 
he could not understand those who did speak it — how 
was the homesick lad to be sociable and gay under such 
conditions ? Besides, he was Corsican, a despised rep- 
resentative of a conquered race. And the French boys 
taunted him about it. One day, according to the teacher, 
the boys threw at him the insult that " the Corsicans 
were a lot of cowards." Napoleon flashed out of his re- 
serve and replied, " Had you been but four to one you 
would never have conquered us, but you were ten to one." 
To pacify him the teacher remarked, "But you had a good 
general — Paoli." — " Yes," answered the lad of ten, " and 
I would like to resemble him." 

According to the school register and to Napoleon's own 
record, he remained at Autun till the 12th of May, 1779. 
He had learned " enough French to converse freely, and 
to make little themes and translations." 

In the meantime, Charles Bonaparte had been attending 
his king, the young Louis XVI., at Versailles. Courtier 
in France as in Aiaccio, the adroit lawyer had pleased. 



26 NAPOLEON chap. 

A bounty from the royal purse swelled the pay of the 
Corsican delegates, a reward for " their excellent be- 
havior"; and for once Charles Bonaparte was moderately 
supplied with funds. 

On May 19, 1779, Napoleon entered the college of 
Brienne. Its teachers were incompetent monks. The 
pupils were mainly aristocratic French scions of the privi- 
leged nobility, proud, idle, extravagant, vicious. Most of 
these young men looked down upon Napoleon with scorn. 
In him met almost every element necessary to stir their 
dislike, provoke their ridicule, or excite their anger. In 
person he was pitifully thin and short, with lank hair 
and awkward manners ; his speech was broken French, 
mispronounced and ungrammatical ; it was obvious that 
he was poor ; he was a Corsican ; and instead of being 
humble and submissive, he was proud and defiant. Dur- 
ing the five years Napoleon spent here he was isolated, 
moody, tortured by his own discontent, and the cruelty 
of his position. He studied diligently those branches he 
liked, the others he neglected. In mathematics he stood 
first in the school, in history and geography he did fairly 
well ; Latin, German, and the ornamental studies did not 
attract him at all. The German teacher considered him 
a dunce. But he studied more in the library than in the 
schoolroom. While the other boys were romping on the 
playground, Napoleon was buried in some corner with a 
book. 

On one occasion Napoleon, on entering a room and see- 
ing a picture of Choiseul which hung therein, burst into a 
torrent of invective against the minister who had bought 
Corsica. The school authorities punished the blasphemy. 

At another time one of the young French nobles scorn- 



11 BOYHOOD 27 

fully said to Napoleon, " Your father is nothing but a 
wretched tipstaff." Napoleon challenged his insulter, and 
was imprisoned for his temerity. 

Upon another occasion he was condemned by the quar- 
termaster, for some breach of the rules, to wear a peni- 
tential garb and to eat his dinner on his knees at the 
door of the common dining-room. The humiliation was 
real and severe ; for doubtless the French lads who had 
been bullying him were all witnesses to the disgrace, and 
were looking upon the culprit with scornful eyes, while 
they jeered and laughed at him. Napoleon became hys- 
terical under the strain, and began to vomit. The prin- 
cipal of the school happening to pass, was indignant that 
such a degradation should be put upon so dutiful and dili- 
gent a scholar, and relieved him from the torture. 

"Ah, Bourrienne ! I like you: you never make fun of 
me ! " Is there nothing pathetic in this cry of the heart- 
sick boy ? 

To his father. Napoleon w;rote a passionate appeal to 
be taken from the school where he was the butt of ridi- 
cule, or to be supplied with sufficient funds to maintain 
himself more creditably. General Marbeuf interfered 
in his behalf, and supplied him with a more liberal 
allowance. 

The students, in turn, were invited to the table of the 
head-master. One day when this honor was accorded 
Napoleon, one of the monk-professors sweetened the boy's 
satisfaction by a contemptuous reference to Corsica and 
to Paoli. It seems well-nigh incredible that the cleri- 
cal teachers should have imitated the brutality of the 
supercilious young nobles, but Bourrienne is authority for 
the incident. Napoleon broke out defiantly against the 



28 NAPOLEON chap. 

teacher, just as he had done against his fellow-students : 
" Paoli was a great man ; he loved his country ; and I 
will never forgive my father for his share in uniting 
Corsica to France. He should have followed Paoli." 
Mocked by some of the teachers and tormented by the 
richer students, Napoleon withdrew almost completely 
within himself. He made no complaints, prayed for no 
relief, but fell back on his own resources. When the 
boys mimicked his pronunciation, turned his name into an 
offensive nickname, and flouted him with the subjection 
of his native land, he either remained disdainfully silent, 
or threw himself single-handed against his tormentors. 

To each student was given a bit of ground that he 
might use it as he saw fit. Napoleon annexed to his own 
plat two adjacent strips which their temporary owners 
had abandoned ; and by hedging and fencing made for 
himself a privacy, a solitude, which he could not other- 
wise get. Here he took his books, here he read and 
pondered, here he indulged his tendency to day-dreaming, 
to building castles in the air. 

His schoolmates did not leave him at peace even here. 
Occasionally they would band together and attack his 
fortress. Then, says Burgoing, one of his fellow-stu- 
dents, "it was a sight to see him burst forth in a fury 
to drive off the intruders, without the slightest regard 
to their numbers." 

Much as he disliked his comrades, there was no trace 
of meanness in his resentments. He suffered punishment 
for things he had not done rather than report on the real 
offenders. Unsocial and unpopular, he nevertheless en- 
joyed a certain distinction among the students as well 
as with the teachers. His pride, courage, maturity of 



II BOYHOOD 29 

thought, and quick intelligence arrested attention an^ 
compelled respect. 

When the students, during the severe winter of 
1783-84, were kept within doors, it was Napoleon who 
suggested mimic war as a recreation. A snow fort was 
built, and the fun was to attack and defend it with snow- 
balls. Then Napoleon's natural capacity for leadership 
was seen. He at one time led the assailants, at another 
the defenders, as desperately in earnest as when he after- 
ward attacked or defended kingdoms. One student 
refusing to obey an order. Napoleon knocked him down 
with a chunk of ice. Many years after this unlucky 
person turned up with a scar on his face, and reminded 
the Emperor Napoleon of the incident ; whereupon Napo- 
leon fell into one of his best moods, and dealt liberally 
with the petitioner. 

During the whole time Napoleon was at Brienne he 
remained savagely Corsican. He hated the French, and 
did not hesitate to say so. Of course the French here 
meant were the pupils of the school — the big boys who 
jeered at his poverty, his parentage, his countrymen. 
It is worth notice that he never by word or deed sought 
to disarm his enemies by pandering to their prejudices. 
He made no effort whatever to ingratiate himself with 
them by surrendering any of his own opinions. He 
would not even compromise by concealing what he felt. 
He was a Corsican to the core, proud of his island heroes, 
proud of Paoli, frankly detesting those who had trampled 
upon his country. It must have sounded even to the 
dull ears of ignorant monks as something remarkable 
when this shabby-looking lad, hardly in his teens, cried 
out, defiantly, " I hope one day to be able to give Corsica 



1)» 



30 NAPOLEON chap. 

her freedom ! " He had drunk in the wild stories the 
peasants told of Sampiero; he had devoured the vivid 
annals of Plutarch, and his hopes and dreams were 
already those of a daring man. 

During these years at Brienne, General Marbeuf con- 
tinued to be Napoleon's active friend. He seems to 
have regularly supplied him with money, and it was 
the General's interference which secured his release 
from imprisonment in the affair of the duel. Through 
the same influence Napoleon secured the good-will of 
Madame de Brienne, who lived in the chateau near the 
school. This lady warmed to the lad, took him to her 
house to spend holidays and vacations, and treated him 
with a motherly kindness which he never forgot. 

The character which Napoleon established at Brienne 
varied with the point of view. To the students generally 
he appeared to be unsocial, quarrelsome, and savage. To 
some of the teachers he seemed to be mild, studious, grate- 
ful. To others, imperious and headstrong. M. de Keralio 
reported him officially as submissive, upright, thoughtful, 
"conduct most exemplary." On all he made the impres- 
sion that he was inflexible, not to be moved after he has 
taken his stand. Pichegru, afterward conqueror of Hol- 
land, and after that supporter of the Bourbons, was a 
pupil-teacher to Napoleon at Brienne, and is thought to 
have been the quartermaster who put upon him the shame 
of eating on his knees at the dining-room door. Bourbon 
emissaries were eager to win over to their cause the brill- 
iant young general, Bonaparte, and suggested the matter 
to Pichegru. " Do not try it," said he. " I knew him at 
Brienne. His character is inflexible. He has taken his 
side, and will not change." 



n BOYHOOD 31 

When Napoleon, in his last years, came to speak of his 
school days, he seemed to have forgotten all that was un- 
pleasant. Time had swept its effacing fingers over the 
actual facts, and he had come to believe that he had not 
only been happy at Brienne, but had been a jolly, frolick- 
some fellow — a very cheerful, sociable, popular lad. It 
was some other youth who had shunned his fellows, 
fenced himself within a garden wall, combated all intrud- 
ers with sticks and stones, and hated the French because 
they teased him so. The real Napoleon, according to the 
captive Emperor, was a boy like other boys, full of fun, 
frolic, tricks, and games. One of the sportive tricks of 
the merry and mythical Bonaparte was this : An old com- 
mandant, upward of eighty, was practising the boys at 
target-shooting with a cannon. He complained that the 
aim was bad, none of the balls hit the target. Presently, 
he asked of those near him if they had seen the ball strike. 
After half a dozen discharges, the old general bethought 
himself of counting the balls. Then the trick was ex- 
posed — the boys had slipped the balls aside each time the 
gun was loaded. 

Another anecdote told by the Emperor brings him more 
immediately within the circle of our sympathies. Just 
above his own room at the college was a fellow-student 
who was learning to play on the horn. He practised 
loudly, and at all hours. Napoleon found it impossible 
to study. Meeting the student on the stairs. Napoleon 
feelingly remonstrated. The horn player was in a huff at 
once, as a matter of course. His room was his own, and 
he would blow horns in it as much as he pleased. . " We 
will see about that," said Napoleon, and he challenged the 
offender to mortal combat. Death could have no terrors 



32 NAPOLEON chap. 

compared to the incessant tooting in the room above, and 
Napoleon was determined to take his chances on sudden 
sword thrust rather than the slow tortures of the horn 
practice. Fellow-students interfered, a compromise was 
reached, and the duel did not come off. The student who 
roused the ire of Napoleon in this extreme manner was 
named Bussey, and in the campaign of 1814 Napoleon met 
him again, received offers of service from him, and named 
him aide-de-camp. It is a pleasure to be able to record 
that this fellow-student of Brienne remained faithful to 
Napoleon to the very last, in 1814 and again in 1815. 

In the year 1810 the Emperor Napoleon, divorced from 
Josephine, was spending a few days in seclusion in the 
Trianon at Versailles, awaiting the coming of the Austrian 
wife, "the daughter of the Caesars." Hortense and Ste- 
phanie Beauharnais were with him, and Stephanie mis- 
chievously asked him if he knew how to waltz. Napoleon 
answered : — 

"When I was at the military school I tried, I don't 
know how many times, to overcome the vertigo caused by 
waltzing, without being able to succeed. Our dancing- 
master had advised us when practising to take a chair in 
our arms instead of a lady. I never failed to fall down 
with the chair, which I squeezed affectionately, and to 
break it. The chairs in my room, and those of two or 
three of my comrades, disappeared one after another." 

The Emperor told this story in his gayest manner, and 
the two ladies laughed, of course ; but Stephanie insisted 
that he should even now learn to waltz, that all Germans 
waltzed, that his new wife would expect it, and that as 
the Empress could only dance with the Emperor, he must 
not deprive her of such a pleasure. 



n BOYHOOD 3? 

" You are right," exclaimed Napoleon. " Come ! give 
me a lesson." 

Thereupon he rose, took the merry Stephanie in his 
arms, and went capering around the room to the music 
of his own voice, humming the air of The Queen of 
Prussia. After two or three turns, his fair teacher gave 
him up in despair ; he was too hopelessly awkward ; and 
she flattered him, while pronouncing him a failure, by 
saying that he was made to give lessons and not receive 
them. 



Toward the close of 1783 a royal inspector of the mili- 
tary schools, Keralio by name, examined the students at 
Brienne for the purpose of selecting those who were to be 
promoted to the higher military school at Paris. M. de 
Keralio was greatly impressed by Napoleon, and emphati- 
cally recommended his promotion. This inspector having 
died, his successor examined Napoleon the second time, 
and passed him on to the Paris school, which he entered 
on October 30, 1784. On the certificate which went with 
him from Brienne were the words, " Character masterful, 
imperious, and headstrong." 

When Napoleon alighted from the coach which brought 
him from Brienne to Paris, and stood, a tiny foreign boy, 
in the midst of the hurly-burly of a great city, he must 
have felt himself one of the loneliest and most insignifi- 
cant of mortals. Demetrius Permon found him in the 
Palais Royal, " where he was gaping and staring with 
wonder at everything he saw. Truly, he looked like a 
fresh importation." M. Permon invited the lad to dine, 
and found him "very morose," and feared that he had 



34 NAPOLEON chap. 

"more self-conceit than was suitable to his condition." 
Napoleon made this impression upon Permon by declaim- 
ing violently against the luxury of the young men at the 
military school, denouncing the system of education which 
prevailed there, comparing it unfavorably to the system 
of ancient Sparta, and announcing his intention of memo- 
rializing the minister of war on the subject. 

Napoleon, at the military school of Paris, continued to 
be studious, and to read almost constantly. He was obe- 
diciit to the authorities, and defiant to the young aristo- 
crats who surrounded him and looked down on him. The 
extravagance, indolence, and superciliousness of the noble 
students, together with the general luxury which pre- 
vailed in the establishment, disgusted and enraged a 
scholar who had no money to spend, and who had come 
there to study. When he, as head of the State, came to 
reorganize the educational system of France, he did not 
forget the lessons taught by his own experience. As a 
man he adopted a system which avoided all the abuses 
which as a boy he had denounced. 

During this period he may have occasionally visited 
the Permons in Paris and his sister Elisa, who had been 
admitted into the State school at St. Cyr. Madame 
D'Abrantes so relates in her Memoirs; and while there 
is a difficulty about dates, her narrative is, perhaps, 
substantially correct. It is a lifelike picture she paints 
of Napoleon's gloom at Paris and Elisa's sorrow at St. Cyr : 
Napoleon wretched because he could not. pay his way 
among the boys ; Elisa miserable because she could not 
keep step with the girls. Napoleon sulked and denounced 
luxury ; Elisa wept and bewailed her poverty. Elisa 
was consoled by a tip given by Madame Permon. As 



II BOYHOOD 35 

for Napoleon, lie refused to borrow : " I have no right 
to add to the burdens of my mother." 

On final examination, August, 1785, Napoleon stood 
forty-second in his class — not a brilliant mark, certainly, 
but it sufficed. He received his appointment of sub-lieu- 
tenant with joy unbounded. His days of tutelage were 
over: henceforth he was a man and an officer. Having 
chosen the artillery service, he set out with Des Mazis, a 
friend he had made at the military school, to join the regi- 
ment of La Fere, which Avas stationed at Valence. Ac- 
cording to one account. Napoleon borrowed money from a 
cloth merchant to make this journey ; according to another, 
Des Mazis paid the way of both. However that may 
be, it seems that when the young officers reached Lyons, 
a gay city of the south, they relaxed the rigors of mili- 
tary discipline to such an extent that their money all 
vanished. The remainder of the distance to Valence 
was made on foot. 



Those biographers who devote their lives to defaming 
Napoleon, lay stress on the alleged fact that he was edu- 
cated by the King. In becoming an adherent of the Revo- 
lution, these writers say that he betrayed an amount of 
moral obliquity quite appalling. Louis XVL was king 
while Napoleon was at Brienne, and the suggestion 
that Napoleon owed a debt of gratitude to Louis XVI. 
is amusing. The tax-payers, the people, educated Napo- 
leon ; and whatever debt of gratitude he owed, he owed 
to them. In going with the Revolution, he went with 
those who had paid his schooling. He himself drew this 
distinction at the time. When M. Demetrius Permon 



36 NAPOLEON chap, ii 

rebuked him for criticising royalty, throwing the alleged 
debt of gratitude in his teeth, the boy replied, " The 
State educates me; not the King." 

Of course Permon could not admit the distinction, he 
being a noble of the Old Order; nor can biographers 
who write in the interest of modern Toryism admit it. 
But the distinction is there, nevertheless; the boy saw 
it, and so does impartial history. 



CHAPTER III 

"VTAPOLEON carried with him to his new home a letter 
of introduction from the Bishop of Autun to the ex- 
Abbot of St. Ruffe, and with this leverage he made his way 
into the best society of Valence. For the first time cir- 
cumstances were favorable to him, and the good effects of 
the change were at once evident. Occupying a better 
place in life than before, he was more contented, more 
sociable. He mingled with the people about him, and 
made friends. No longer a waif, a charity boy from 
abroad, thrust among other boys who looked down upon 
him as a social inferior, he was now an officer of State, 
housed, fed, clothed, salaried at the public expense. No 
longer under the wheels, he held a front seat in that won- 
drous vehicle which men call government, and in which 
a few so comfortably ride while the many so contentedly 
wear harness and pull. No longer subject to everybody's 
orders. Napoleon had become one of the masters in God's 
world here below, and could issue orders himself. Glori- 
ous change ! And the sun began to look bright to 
"Lieutenant Bonaparte of the King's Royal Academy." 
He cultivated himself and others socially. He found 
some congenial spirits among the elderly men of the 
place ; also some among the young women. In the hours 
not spent in study, and not claimed by his duties, he 

37 



38 NAPOLEON chap. 

could be found chatting at the coffee-house, strolling with 
brother officers, dancing at the neighborhood balls, and 
playing the beau amid the belles of this high provincial 
circle. 

To one of these young ladies, according to tradition 
and his own statement, he lost his heart. But when we 
seek to know something more definite, tradition and his 
own statements differ. If we are to accept his version, 
the courtship led to nothing beyond a few promenades, 
and the eating of cherries together in the early morning. 
According to the local tradition, however, he proposed 
and was rejected. Her parents were local aristocrats, 
and had so little confidence in the future of the little 
officer that they married their girl by preference to a 
M. de Bressieux — a good, safe, commonplace gentleman 
of the province. In after years the lady reminded Na- 
poleon of their early friendship, and he at once made 
generous provision for both herself and husband. 

If possible. Napoleon studied more diligently at Valence 
than at Brienne. Plutarch's Lives and Csesar's Commen- 
taries he had already mastered while a child ; Rousseau 
had opened a new world of ideas to him in Paris : he now 
continued his historical studies by reading Herodotus, 
Strabo, Diodorus. Anything relating to India, China, 
Arabia, had a peculiar charm for him. Next he learned 
all he could of Germany and England. French history 
he studied minutely, striving to exhaust information on 
the subject. In his researches he was not content merely 
with ordinary historical data : he sought to understand the 
secret meaning of events, and the origin of institutions. 
He studied legislation, statistics, the history of the Church, 
especially the relation of the Church to the State. Like- 



i„ LIEUTENANT 39 

wise he read the masterpieces of French literature and the 
critical judgments which had been passed upon them. 
Novels he did not disdain, and for poetry of the heroic 
cast he had a great fondness. 

He read also the works of Voltaire, Necker, Filangieri, 
and Adam Smith. With Napoleon to read was to study. 
He made copious notes, and these notes prove that he bent 
every faculty of his mind to the book in hand. He ana- 
lyzed, commented, weighed statements in the balance of 
his own judgment — in short, doing everything necessary 
to the complete mastery of the subject. A paper on which 
he jotted down at that time his ideas of the relations 
between Church and State appear to show that he had 
reached at that time the conclusions he afterward embodied 
in the Concordat. Rousseau he studied again, but the book 
which seems to have taken his fancy more than any other 
was the Abbe Raynal's famous History of the Institu- 
tions and Commerce of the Europeans in the Two Indies. 
This book was a miscellany of essays and extracts treating 
of superstition, tyranny, etc., and predicting that a revo- 
lution was at hand in France if abuses were not reformed. 

How was it that Napoleon, with his meagre salary, 
could command so many costly books ? A recent biogra- 
pher patly states that he "subscribed to a public library." 
This may be true, but Napoleon himself explained to an 
audience of kings and princes at Erfurth, in 1808, that he 
was indebted to the kindness of one Marcus Aurelius, 
a rich bookseller, " a most obliging man who placed his 
books at my service." 

The personal appearance of the young lieutenant was 
not imposing. He was short, painfully thin, and awkward. 
His legs were so much too small for his boots that he 



40 NAPOLEON chap. 

looked ridiculous — at least to one young lady, who nick- 
named him "Puss in Boots." He wore immense "dog's 
ears," which fell to his shoulders, and this style of 
wearing the hair gave his dark Italian face a rather 
sinister look, impressing a lady acquaintance with the 
thought that he would not be the kind of man one would 
like to meet near a wood at night. Generally he was 
silent, wrapped in his own thoughts ; but when he spoke, 
his ideas were striking and his expressions energetic. He 
rather affected the laconic, oracular style, and his attitude 
was somewhat that of a man posing for effect. In famil- 
iar social intercourse he was different. His smile became 
winning, his voice soft and tender, and his magnetism 
irresistible. He loved to joke others and play little pranks 
with them ; but he could not relish a joke at his own ex- 
pense, nor did he encourage familiarity. He had none of 
the brag, bluster, or roughness of the soldier about him, 
but in a quiet way he was imperious, self-confident, self- 
sufficient. So little did his appearance then, or at any 
other time, conform to the popular ideal of the soldier, 
that one old grenadier of the Bourbon armies, on having 
Napoleon pointed out to him, after the Italian campaign, 
could not believe such a man could possibly be a great 
warrior. " That a general ! " said the veteran with con- 
tempt ; " why, when he walks he does not even step out 
with the right foot first ! " 

Extremely egotistic he was, and so remained to his last 
hour. He had no reverence, looked for fact in all direc- 
tions, had almost unerring judgment, and believed himself 
superior to his fellow-students, to his teachers, and to his 
brother officers. At the age of fifteen he was giving ad- 
vice to his father — very sound advice, too. At that early 



Ill LIEUTENANT 41 

age he had taken family responsibilities upon his shoul- 
ders, and was gravely disposing of Joseph and Lucien. 
In a remarkable letter he elaborately analyzed Joseph's 
character, and reached the conclusion that he was an ami- 
able nonentity, fit only for society. It had been well for 
Napoleon if he had always remembered this, and acted 
upon it. 

In August, 1786, Napoleon spent a short time in Lyons. 
After this he was perhaps sent to Douay in Flanders, 
though he himself has written that on September 1, 1786, 
he obtained leave of absence and set out for Corsica, which 
he reached on the fifteenth of the same month. 



Napoleon found the condition of the family greatly 
changed. Charles Bonaparte had died in France in 
February, 1785. General Marbeuf, also, was dead. The 
French officials were not now so friendly to the Bona- 
partes. Madame Letitia had been growing mulberry trees 
in order to obtain the governmental bounty — the govern- 
ment being intent upon building up the silk industry. 
Madame Bonaparte had apparently been giving more 
thought to the bounty than to the trees, and the result was 
that the officials had refused payment. Hence the supply 
of cash in the household was cut down to Napoleon's sal- 
ary (about $225), and such sums as could be teased out 
of the rich uncle — the miserly archdeacon. Desperately 
worried as he must have been by the condition of the 
family finances, Napoleon put a bold face upon it, strut- 
ting about town so complacently that he gave much offence 
to the local magnates — the town oracles whose kind words 
are not easily won by the neighborhood boys who have 



42 NAPOLEON chap. 

gone to distant colleges for an education and have returned 
for inspection and approval. To the sidewalk critics, who 
only nine years ago had jeered at the slovenly lad and his 
girl sweetheart, Napoleon's style of walk and talk may 
have seemed that of inflated self-conceit. 

Like a good son. Napoleon exerted himself to the utmost 
in behalf of his mother, making every effort to have the 
mulberry bounty paid, and to wring revenue out of the 
family property. He met with no success in either direc- 
tion, though it appears that he prevailed upon the local 
authorities to grant some slight favor to the family. At 
one time Madame Letitia was reduced to the necessity of 
doing all her housework with her own hands. 

At Elba, the Emperor related a story which belongs to 
this period of his life. He said that one day his mother's 
mother was hobbling along the street in Ajaccio, and that 
he and Pauline followed the old lady, and mimicked her. 
Their grandmother, happening to turn, caught them in 
the act. She complained to Madame Letitia. Pauline was 
at once " spanked " and disposed of ; Napoleon, who was 
rigged out in regimentals, could not be handled. His 
mother bided her time. Next day, when her son was off 
his guard, she cried, " Quick, Napoleon ! You are invited 
to dine with the governor ! " He ran up to his room to 
change clothing — she quietly followed. When she judged 
that the proper time had come, she rushed into the room, 
seized her undressed hero before he guessed her purpose, 
laid him across the maternal knees, and belabored him 
earnestly with the flat of her hand. 

In October, 1787, Napoleon was again in Paris, petition- 
ing the government in behalf of his mother, and seeking 
to have his furlough extended. Failing as to his mother, 



Ill LIEUTENANT 4S 

succeeding as to himself, he was back home in January, 
1788, and remained there until June of the same year. 
While in Corsica, Napoleon frequently dined with 
brother officers in the French army. Between him and 
them, however, there was little congeniality. He was 
hotly Paolist, and his talk was either of Corsican inde- 
pendence or of topics historical and governmental. His 
brother officers did not enjoy these conversations. His 
patriotism offended ; his learning bored them. What did 
the average French officer of that day know or care about 
history and the science of government ? The upshot of 
such a dinner-party usually was that Napoleon got into a 
wrangle with that one of the officers who imagined he 
knew something of the subject, while the others, who 
honestly realized that they did not, would walk off in dis- 
gust. " My comrades, like myself," says M. de Renain, 
one of the officers in question, " lost patience with what 
we considered ridiculous stuff and pedantry." 

So far did Napoleon carry his patriotic sentiments that 
he rather plainly threatened to take sides with the Corsi- 
cans if any collision should occur between the French and 
his countrymen. Upon this, one of the officers who dis- 
liked him asked sharply, "Would you draw your sword 
against the soldiers of the King ? " 

Napoleon, dressed in the King's uniform, had the good 
sense to remain silent. The officers were offended at his 
tone, and, says Renain, " This is the last time he did me 
the honor of dining with me." 

Not for a day had Napoleon neglected his books. To 
escape the household noises, he went to the attic, and 
there pursued his studies. Far and wide ranged his rest- 
les-s mind, from the exact sciences, dry and heavy, to Plato 



44 NAPOLEON char 

and Ossian, rich in suggestions to the most opulent imag- 
ination nature ever gave a practical man. To the very- 
last, Napoleon remained half mystic ; and when he stood in 
the storm the night before Waterloo, and cast into the 
darkness the words, " We are agreed " ; or when he 
remained silent for hours at St. Helena watching the 
vast wings of the mist whirl, and turn, and soar around 
the summit of the bleak, barren mountain of rock, we feel 
that if pens were there to trace his thought, Ossian would 
seem to live again. From his youth up the most striking 
characteristic of his mind was its enormous range ; its 
wide sweep from the pettiest, prosiest details of fact to 
the sublimest dreams and the most chimerical fancies. 
Not wholly satisfied with reading and commentary, he 
strove to compose. Under the Bourbons, his outlook in 
the army was not promising. He might hope, after many 
tedious years of garrison service, to become a captain ; 
after that it would be a miracle if he rose higher. Hence 
his lack of interest in the routine work of a soldier, and 
hence his ambition to become an author. He wrote a 
story called The Count of Essex^ also a novel founded on 
Corsican life, and pulsing with hatred of France. Another 
story which he called The Masked Prophet, is the same 
which Moore afterward used in The Veiled Prophet of 
Khorassan. 

His greatest exertions, however, were spent upon 
the History of Corsica. To this work he clung with a 
tenacity of purpose that is touching. All the long, 
tragic story of Corsica seems to have run like fire in 
the boy's veins, and the heroes of his country — Paoli, 
Sampiero, Delia Rocca — seemed to him to be as great 
as the men of antiquity, as perhaps they were. There- 



Ill LIEUTENANT 45 

fore, the young man wrote and rewrote, trying to get 
the book properly written, his thoughts properly ex- 
pressed. He had turned to Raynal, as we have seen, 
and the abbe had kindly said, "Search further, and 
write it over." And Napoleon had done so. At least 
three times he had recast the entire book. He sought 
the approval of a former teacher, Dupuy ; he sent " copy " 
to Paoli. Dupuy had a poor opinion of the performance ; 
and Paoli told him flatly he was too young to write his- 
tory. But Napoleon persevered, finished the work, and 
eagerly sought publishers. Alas ! the publishers shook 
their heads. Finally, at Paris was found a bold adventurer 
in the realm of book-making, who was willing to under- 
take half the cost if the author would furnish the other 
half. But for one reason or another the book was never 
published. 

The passionate earnestness with which Napoleon toiled 
at his book on Corsican history, the intense sympathy 
with which he studied the lives of Corsican heroes, the 
fiery wrath he nursed against those who had stricken 
down Corsican liberties, were but so many evidences of 
the set purpose of his youth — to free his country, to 
give it independence. There is no doubt that the one 
consuming ambition of these early years was as pure as 
it was great: he would do what Sampiero and Paoli 
had failed to do — he would achieve the independence 
of Corsica ! 

Napoleon rejoined his regiment at Auxonne at the end 
of May, 1788. That he did so with reluctance is appar- 
ent from the manner in which he had distorted facts 
to obtain extension of his furlough. Garrison duty had 
ne charms for him; the dull drudgery of daily routine 



46 NAPOLEON chap, in 

became almost insupportable. It appears that he was 
put under arrest for the unsatisfactory manner in which 
he had superintended some work on the fortifications. 
When off duty he gave his time to his books. He 
became ill, and wrote to his mother, " I have no resource 
but work. I dress but once in eight days. I sleep but 
little, and take but one meal a day." Under this regimen 
of no exercise, hard work, and little sleep he came near 
dying. 

In September, 1789, came another furlough, and the 
wan-looking lieutenant turned his face homeward. In 
passing through Marseilles he paid his respects to the 
Abbe Raynal. 



CHAPTER IV 

rpHE French Revolution was now (1789-90) getting 
under full headway. The States- General had met 
on May 5, 1789; the Third Estate had asserted and 
made good its supremacy. The King having ordered 
up troops and dismissed Necker, riots followed; the 
Bastille was taken and demolished. The nobles who 
had persuaded Louis XVI. to adopt the measures which 
provoked the riots, fled to foreign lands. Louis was 
brought from Versailles to Paris, Bailly was made mayor 
of the city, Lafayette commander of the National Guard, 
and on the night session of August 4, feudalism, losing 
hope, offered itself up as a sacrifice to the Revolution. 

Liberty, fraternity, equality, freedom of conscience, 
liberty of the press, were proclaimed ; and the mighty 
movement which was shaking down the Old Order was 
felt at Auxonne as in Paris. The officers, as a rule, were 
for the King ; the soldiers for the nation. Society ladies 
and governmental officials were royalists, generally; so, 
also, the higher clericals. The cures and the masses of 
the people were for the Revolution. 

Instinctively, and without the slightest hesitation. Na- 
poleon took sides with the nation. He needed no coer- 
cion, no change of heart ; he was already an enemy of the 
Ancien Regime, and had been so from his first years in 
France. 

47 



48 NAPOLEON chx*. 

" How does it happen that you, Napoleon, favor democ- 
racy ? You are a noble, educated at a school where none 
but nobles can enter ; you are an officer, a position noi e 
but nobles may hold ; you wear the King's livery ; " n 
are fed on his bounty : where did you get your republ 
principles ? " 

Supposing such a question to have been put, we 
imagine the answer to have been something like this — 

" I go with the reformers partly because I hate the Old 
Order, partly because I see in the coming changes a chance 
for me to rise, and partly because I believe the reformers 
are right. I have read books which gave me new ideas ; 
I have thought for myself, and reached conclusions of my 
own. The stupid monk who threw my schoolboy essay 
into the fire at Brienne because it criticised royalty, only 
stimulated my defiance and my independence. I have 
seen what your system of education is, and condemn it ; 
have learnt what your nobles are, and detest them. I have 
seen the Church, which preaches the beauties of poverty, 
rob my family of a rich inheritance, and I loathe the 
hypocrisy. I have read Rousseau, and believe in his 
gospel ; have studied Raynal, and agree that abuses must 
be reformed. I have looked into the conduct of kings, 
and believe that there are few who do not deserve to be 
dethroned. The privileged have combined, have closed 
the avenues of progress to the lower classes, have taken 
for a few what is the common heritage of all. The peo- 
ple are the source of power — those below not those 
above. I am poor, I hate those above me, I long to be 
rich, powerful, admired. If things remain as they are, 
I shall never be heard of : revolution will change all. 
New men will rise to make the most of new opportunities. 



IV REVOLUTION 49 

Hence I am a Jacobin, a democrat, a republican — call it 
what you will. I am for putting the premium on man- 
hood. The tools to him who can use them ! As to the 
Ciing's uniform and bounty — bah! — you must take me 
"^or a child. The King gives nothing, is nothing; the 
lation gives all, and is everything. I go with the 
' lation ! " 

' With such thoughts fermenting in his head. Napoleon 
' cached home, and at once began to agitate the politics of 
the island. Corsica was far out of the track of the Revo- 
lution, and the people had not been maddened by the 
abuses which prevailed in France. The one great national 
grievance in Corsica was French domination. Therefore 
to arouse the island and put it in line with revolutionary 
l^rance, was a huge task. Nevertheless Napoleon and 
other young men set about it. Copying the approved 
French method, he formed a revolutionary committee, 
f.nd began to organize a national guard. He became a 
violent speaker in the Jacobin club, and a most active 

gitator in the town. Soon the little city of Ajaccio was 
in commotion. 

Paoli's agents bestirred themselves throughout the 
Inland. In some towns the patriot party rose against the 
French authorities. In Ajaccio the royalist party proved 
the stronger. The French commandant, De Barrin, closed 

he democratic club and proclaimed martial law. The 

atriots met in one of the churches, on the night of Octo- 

er 31, 1789, and signed a vigorous protest and appeal to 
^ be National Assembly of France. This paper was writ- 

3n by Napoleon, and he was one of those who signed. 
Baulked in Ajaccio, Napoleon turned to Bastia, the capi- 

al. Agitating there and distributing tricolored cockades 



60 NAPOLEON chap. 

which he had ordered from Leghorn, he soon got matters 
so well advanced that he headed a deputation which waited 
upon the royal commandant and demanded that he, too, 
should adopt the national cockade. De Barrin, the com- 
mandant, refused. A riot broke out, and he consented. 
Napoleon agitated for a national guard. Deputations 
sought the governor and requested his sanction. He re- 
fused. One morning the streets were thronged with 
patriots, armed, marching to one of the churches to be 
enrolled. De Barrin called out his troops, trained cannon 
on the church, and set his columns in motion to attack. 
Shots were exchanged, two French soldiers killed, two 
wounded, and an officer got a bullet in the groin. Several 
Bastians, including two children, were wounded. De 
Barrin lost his head, yielded at all points, and ordered six 
hundred guns delivered to the insurgents. Prompt obe- 
dience not having been given to his order, the Bastians 
broke into the citadel, armed themselves, and insisted that 
they, jointly with the French, should garrison the fortress. 
When quiet was restored, the governor ordered Napoleon . 
to leave, and he did so. 

This episode in Napoleon's career is related by an enemy 
of Napoleon, and it is to be received with caution. Yet as 
it is a companion piece to what he had attempted at Ajaccio, 
there is nothing violently incredible about it. It is cer- 
tain he was very active at that time, and that he was often 
at Bastia. What was his purpose, if not to foment revo- 
lutionary movements ? 

On November 30, 1789, the National Assembly of France ^ ^^ 
decreed the incorporation of Corsica with France, and , 
amnesty for all political offenders, including Paoli. Bon- 
fires in Corsica and general joy greeted the news. The ^ 



IV REVOLUTION 61 

triumph of the patriots was complete. A democratic town 
government for Ajaccio was organized, a friend of Napo- 
leon was chosen mayor, and Joseph was put in place as 
secretary to the mayor. A local guard was raised, and 
Napoleon served as private member of it. At the club 
and on the streets he was one of the loudest agitators. 

Paoli, now a hero in France as well as in Corsica, was 
called home by these events, received a magnificent ova- 
tion from the French, and reached Corsica, July, 1790. 
When he landed, after an exile of twenty-one years, the 
old man knelt to the ground and kissed it. 

Supported by the town government, Napoleon renewed 
his activity, the immediate object aimed at being the cap- 
ture of the citadel. He made himself intensely disagree- 
able to the royalists. Upon one occasion, during a 
religious procession, he was attacked by the Catholics, as 
an enemy of the Church. His efforts to seize the citadel 
cpme to nothing. There was an uprising of the revolu- 
tionists in the town, but the French officials fled into the 
citadel and prepared to defend it. Napoleon advised an 
attack, but the town authorities lost heart. They decided 
not to fight, but to protest ; and Napoleon drew up the 
paper. 

The people of Corsica met in local district meetings and 
chose delegates to an assembly which was to elect depart- 
mental and district councils to govern the island. This 
general assembly met at Orezzo, September 9, 1790, and 
remained in session a month. Among the delegates were 
-^oseph Bonaparte and Uncle Fesch. Napoleon attended 
*■ .,d took an active part in the various meetings which 
vere held in connection with the work of the assembly. 
He was a frequent speaker at these meetings, and, while 



62 NAPOLEON chap. 

timid and awkward at first, soon became one of the most 
popular orators. 

It was while he was on his way to Orezzo, that Napo- 
leon first met Paoli. The old hero gave the young man 
a distinguished reception. Attended by a large cavalcade, 
the two rode over the fatal field of Ponte Nuovo. Paoli 
pointed out the various positions the troops had occupied, 
and related the incidents of that lamentable day. Napo- 
leon's comments, his peculiar and original thought and 
speech, struck Paoli forcibly ; and he is said to have 
remarked that Napoleon was not modern, but reminded 
him of Plutarch's heroes. Napoleon himself, when at St. 
Helena, represents Paoli as often patting him on the head 
and making the remark above mentioned. 

The assembly at Orezzo voted that Corsica should 
constitute one department, and that Paoli should be its 
president. He was also made commander-in-chief of the 
National Guard. The conduct of Buttafuoco and Peretti 
who had been representing Corsica in France, was con- 
demned. Pozzo di Borgo and Gentili were chosen to 
declare to the National Assembly the loyalty of Corsica 
to the principles of the French Revolution. 

Napoleon had endeavored to secure the election of 
Joseph Bonaparte to the general directory of the depart- 
ment. In this he failed, but Joseph was chosen as one of 
the district directory for Ajaccio. 

During the sitting of the convention Napoleon wiled 
away many an hour in familiar intercourse with the peas- 
antry. He visited them at their huts, made himself at 
home by their firesides, and interested himself in their 
affairs. He revived some of the old Corsican festivals, 
and the target practice which had long been forbidden. 



ly REVOLUTION 63 

Out of his own purse he offered prizes for the best marks- 
men. In this manner he won the hearts of the mountain- 
eers — a popularity which was of value to him soon 
afterward. 

Returned to Ajaccio, Napoleon continued to take promi- 
nent part in the debates of the club, and he also continued 
his efforts at authorship. He threw off an impassioned 
" open letter " to Buttafuoco. This was his first success- 
ful writing. With imperial pride, it is dated " from my 
summer house of Milleli." Stimulated perhaps by the 
applause with which young Corsican patriots hailed his 
bitter and powerful arraignment of a traitor. Napoleon 
ventured to compete for the prize which Raynal, through 
the Academy of Lyons, had offered for the best essay on 
the subject " What truths and ideas should he inculcated in 
order best to promote the happiness of mankind. " His essay 
was severely criticised by the learned professors, and its 
author, of course, failed of the prize. 

It was on the plea that his health was shattered, and 
that the waters of Orezzo were good for his complaint, that 
Napoleon had been enabled to prolong his stay in Corsica. 
In February, 1791, he rejoined his regiment at Auxonne. 
His leave had expired long since, but his colonel kindly 
antedated his return. Napoleon had procured false certifi- 
cates, to the effect that he had been kept in Corsica by 
storms. To ease his mother's burden, he brought with him 
his little brother Louis, now twelve years old, whose sup- 
port and schooling Napoleon proposed to take upon him- 
self. To maintain the two upon his slender pay of 
lieutenant required the most rigorous economy. He 
avoided society, ate often nothing but bread, carried on 
his own studies, and taught Louis. The affectionate, 



54 NAPOLEON chap. 

fatherly, self-denying interest he took in the boy beauti- 
fully illustrates the better side of his complex character. 

During the Empire an officer, whose pay was $200 per 
month, complained to Napoleon that it was not enough. 
The Emperor did not express the contempt he felt, but 
spoke of the pittance upon which he had been made to 
live. "When I was lieutenant, I ate dry bread; but I 
shut the door on my poverty." 

It was at Dole, near Auxonne, that the letter to Butta- 
fuoco was printed. Napoleon used to rise early, walk to 
Dole, correct the proofs, and walk back to Auxonne, a dis- 
tance of some twenty miles, before dinner. 

In June, 1791, Napoleon became first lieutenant, with a 
yearly salary of about $260, and was transferred to the 
Fourth Regiment, stationed at Valence. Glad of the pro- 
motion and the slight increase in salary, he did not relish 
the transfer, and he applied for leave to remain at Auxonne. 
Permission was refused, and he quitted the place, owing 
(for a new uniform, a sword, and some wood) about 123. 
Several years passed before he was able to pay off these 
debts. 

Back in Valence, he again lodged with old Mademoiselle 
Bou, he and Louis. He continued his studies, and con- 
tinued to teach Louis. His former friends were dead, or 
had moved away, and he did not go into society as he had 
done before ; his position was too dismal, his poverty too 
real. He lived much in' his room, reading, studying, com- 
posing. Travels, histories, works which treated of poli- 
tics, of ecclesiastical affairs and institutions, attracted him 
specially. No longer seen in elegant drawing-rooms, he 
was the life of the political club. He became, successively, 
librarian, secretary, and president. 



IV REVOLUTION 56 

All this while the Revolution had been rolling on. The 
wealth of the Church was confiscated. Paper money was 
issued. The Festival of the Federation was solemnized. 
Necker lost his grip on the situation, and fled. Mirabeau 
becanie the hope of the moderates. Danton, Robespierre, 
Marat, became influential radicals. The Jacobin club 
rose to power. There developed the great feud between 
the Church and the Revolution, and factions began to 
shed blood in many parts of France. The old-maid aunts 
of the King fled the realm, causing immense excitement. 

In April, 1791, Mirabeau died. His alliance with the 
court not being then known, his death called forth universal 
sorrow and memorial services. At Valence the republican 
club held such a service, and Napoleon is said to have 
delivered an address. Then came the flight of the King 
to Varennes. Upon this event also the club at Valence 
passed judgment, amid excitement and violent harangues. 

In July, 1791, the national oath of allegiance to the new 
order of things was taken at Valence with imposing cere- 
mony, as it was throughout the country. The constitution 
had not been finished ; but the French of that day had the 
faith which works wonders, and they took the oath with 
boundless enthusiasm. 

There was a monster meeting near Valence : a huge altar, 
a grand coming together, on common ground, of dignitaries 
high and low, officials of Church and State, citizens of all 
degrees. Patriotism for one brief moment made them all 
members of one fond family. " We swear to be faithful 
to the Nation, the law, and the King; to maintain the 
constitution ; and to remain united to all Frenchmen by 
the bonds of brotherhood." They all swore it, amid patri- 
otic shouts, songs, cannon thunder, band music, and uni- 



56 NAPOLEON chap. 

versal ecstasy. Mass had begun the ceremony, a Te Deum 
ended it. At night there was a grand banquet, and one 
of those who proposed a toast was Napoleon. Of course 
he was one of those who had taken the oath. 

"Previous to this time," said he, later, "had I been 
ordered to fire upon the people, habit, prejudice, education, 
and the King's name would have induced me to obey. 
With the taking of the national oath it was otherwise ; 
my instinct and my duty were henceforth in harmony." 

Kings and aristocrats throughout the world were turn- 
ing black looks upon France, and an invasion was threat- 
ened. The Revolution must be put down. It was a fire 
which might spread. This threat of foreign intervention 
had an electrical effect upon the French, rousing them to 
resistance. 

Paris was the storm centre. Napoleon was highly ex- 
cited, and to Paris he was most eager to go. Urgently 
he wrote to his great-uncle, the archdeacon, to send him 
three hundred francs to pay his way to Paris. " There 
one can push to the forefront. I feel assured of success. 
Will you bar my road for the lack of a hundred crowns?" 
The archdeacon did not send the money. Napoleon also 
wrote for six crowns his mother owed him. The six 
crowns seem not to have been sent. 

This anecdote of Napoleon's sojourn at Valence is pre- 
served by the local gossips : Early one morning the 
surgeon of the regiment went to Napoleon's room to 
speak to Louis. Napoleon had long since risen, and was 
reading. Louis was yet asleep. To arouse the lad. Na- 
poleon took his sabre and knocked with the scabbard on 
the ceiling above. Louis soon came down, rubbing his 



ly REVOLUTION 57 

eyes and complaining of having been waked in the midst 
of a beautiful dream — a dream in which Louis had fig- 
ured as a king. " You a king ! " said Napoleon ; " I 
suppose I was an emperor then." 

The keenest pang Napoleon ever suffered from the 
ingratitude of those he had favored, was given him by 
this same Louis, for whom he had acted the devoted, 
self-denying father. Not only was Louis basely ungrate- 
ful in the days of the Napoleonic prosperity, but he 
pursued his brother with vindictive meanness when that 
brother lay dying at St. Helena, publishing a libel on 
him so late as 1820. 

A traveller in Corsica (Gregorovius, 1852) writes: 
"We sat around a large table and regaled ourselves 
with an excellent supper. ... A dim olive-oil lamp 
lit the Homeric wanderers' meal. Many a bumper was 
drunk to the heroes of Corsica. We were of four na- 
tions, — Corsicans, French, Germans, and Lombards. I 
once mentioned the name of Louis Bonaparte, and asked 
a question. The company suddenly became silent, and 
the gay Frenchman looked ashamed." 

In August, 1791, Napoleon obtained another furlough, 
and with about $80, which he had borrowed from the 
paymaster of his regiment, he and Louis set out for 
home. Again he left debts behind him, one of them 
being his board bill. 



CHAPTER V 

OOON after Napoleon reached home, the rich uncle, the 
archdeacon, died, and the Bonapartes got his money. 
The bulk of it was invested in the confiscated lands of the 
Church. Some of it was probably spent in Napoleon's 
political enterprises. 

Officers of the Corsican National Guard were soon to be 
elected, and Napoleon formed his plans to secure for him- 
self a lieutenant colonelship. The leaders of the opposing 
faction were Peraldi and Pozzo di Borgo. 

Three commissioners, appointed by the Directory of the 
Island, had the supervision of the election, and the influ- 
ence of these officers would have great weight in deciding 
the contest. Napoleon had recently been over the island 
in company with Volney, inspector of agriculture and 
manufactures, and had personally canvassed for votes 
among the country people. He had made many friends ; 
and, in spite of powerful opposition in the towns, it 
appeared probable that he would win. It is said that he 
resorted to the usual electioneering methods, including 
bribes, threats, promises, and hospitality. Napoleon made 
a good combination with Peretti and Quenza, yielding to 
that interest the first lieutenant colonelship. The second 
was to his own. But one of the commissioners, Murati, 
took up lodgings with Bonaparte's rival candidate, Pe- 

58 



CHAP. V EETURNS HOME 59 

raldi. This was an ominous sign for Napoleon. On the 
night before the election, he got together some of his more 
violent partisans, sent them against the house of Peraldi, 
and had Murati seized and brought to the house of the 
Bonapartes. "You were not free at Peraldi's," said Napo- 
leon to the amazed commissioner ; "here you enjoy liberty." 
Murati enjoyed it so much that he was afraid to stir out 
of the house till the election was over. . 

Next morning Pozzo di Borgo commenced a public and 
violent harangue, denouncing the seizure of the commis- 
sioner. He was not allowed to finish. The Bonaparte 
faction rushed upon the speaker, knocked him down, 
kicked him, and would have killed him had not Napoleon 
interfered. In this episode is said to have originated the 
deadly hatred with which Pozzo ever afterward pursued 
Napoleon, who triumphed over him in the election. 

Ajaccio was torn by revolutionary passion and faction. 
Resisting the decrees of the National Assembly of France, 
the Capuchin friars refused to vacate their quarters. 
Riotous disputes between the revolutionists and the parti- 
sans of the Old Order ensued. The public peace was dis- 
turbed. The military ousted the friars, and took possession 
of the cloister. This added fuel to the flames, and on 
Easter day there was a collision between the factions. 
One of the officers of the militia was killed. Next morn- 
ing, reenforcements from outside the town poured in to 
the military. Between the volunteer guards on the one 
hand, the citadel garrison and the clerical faction on the 
other, a pitched battle seemed inevitable. Commissioners, 
sent by Paoli, arrived, dismissed the militia, and restored 
quiet by thus virtually deciding in favor of the Capuchins. 

Napoleon was believed by the victorious faction to have 



60 NAPOLEON CHAr. 

been the instigator of all the trouble. The commander 
of the garrison bitterly denounced him to the war office 
in Paris. Napoleon, on the contrary, published a mani- 
festo in his own defence, hotly declaring that the whole 
town government of Ajaccio was rotten, and should have 
been overthrown. Unless Ajaccio differed radically from 
most towns, then and now, the indictment was well 
founded. 

At all events, his career in Corsica was at an end, for 
the time. He had strained his relations with the French 
war office, had ignored positive orders to rejoin his com- 
mand, had been stricken off the list for his disobedience, 
had exhausted every resource on his Corsican schemes, 
and was now at the end of his rope. And what had he 
gained ? He had squandered much money, wasted much 
precious time, established a character for trickiness, vio- 
lence, and unscrupulous self-seeking ; and had aroused 
implacable enmities, one of which (that of Pozzo) had no 
trifling share in giving him the death- wound in his final 
struggles in 1814-15. What, after it all, must he now 
do ? He must get up a lot of certificates to his good con- 
duct during the long time he had been absent from France ; 
he must go to Paris and petition the central authority to 
be taken back to the French army. There was no trouble 
in getting the certificates. Paoli and his party, the priests 
and the wealthy towns-people, were so eager to get rid of 
this dangerous young man that they were ready to sign 
any sort of paper, if only he would go away. Armed with 
documentary evidence of his good behavior, Napoleon left 
Corsica in May, 1792, and reached Paris on the 28th of 
that month. 

Things were in a whirl in France. War had been 



V RETUENS HOME 61 

declared against Austria. Officers of royalist principles 
were resigning and fleeing the country. Excitement, sus- 
picion, alarm, uncertainty, were everywhere. No atten- 
tion could be given to Napoleon and his petition just 
then. He saw that he would have to wait, be patient and 
persistent, if ever he won reinstatement. Meanwhile he 
lived in great distress. With no money, no work, no 
powerful friends, Paris was a cold place for the suppliant. 
He sauntered about with Bourrienne, ate at the cheapest 
restaurants, discussed many plans for putting money in 
his purse — none of which put any there. He pawned 
his watch to get the bare necessaries of life. 

Bearing in mind that Napoleon had been so active in 
the republican clubs at Valence and Ajaccio, and recalling 
the urgent appeal for three hundred francs which he had 
made to his great-uncle in order that he might go to 
Paris and push himself to the front, his attitude now that 
he was in Paris is a puzzle. According to his own 
account and that of Bourrienne, he was a mere spectator. 
A royal officer, he felt no inclination to defend the King. 
A violent democratic agitator, he took no part in the 
revolutionary movements. Seeing the mob marching to 
the Tuileries in June, his only thought was to get a good 
view of what was going on ; therefore he ran to the ter- 
race oil the bank of the river and climbed an iron fence. 
He saw the rabble burst into the palace, saw the King 
appear at the window with the red cap on his head. " The 
poor driveller ! " cried Napoleon. And according to 
Bourrienne he said that four or five hundred of the mob 
should have been swept away with cannon, and that the 
others would have taken to their heels. 

During the exciting month of July, Napoleon was still 



62 NAPOLEON chap. 

in Paris. He was promenading tlie streets daily, mingling 
with the people ; he was idle, discontented, ambitious ; he 
was a violent revolutionist, and was not in the habit of 
concealing his views : therefore the conclusion is well-nigh 
irresistible that he kept in touch with events, and knew 
what was in preparation. Where was Napoleon when the 
battalion from Marseilles arrived ? What was his attitude 
during Danton's preparation for the great day on which 
the throne was to be overturned ? Was an ardent, in- 
tensely active man like Napoleon listless and unconcerned, 
while the tramp of the gathering thousands shook the city? 
He had long since written " Most kings deserve to be 
dethroned " : did he by any chance hear what Danton 
said at the Cordeliers, — said with flaming eyes, thunder- 
ing voice, and wild gesticulation, — " Let the tocsin sound 
the last hour of kings. ' Let it peal forth the first hour of 
vengeance, and of the liberty of the people ! To arms ! 
and it will go ! " 

However much we may wish for light on this epoch 
of Napoleon's career, we have no record of his movements. 
We only know that on the 10th of August he went to see 
the spectacle, and saw it. From a window in a neigh- 
boring house, he looked down upon the Westermann attack 
and the Swiss defence. He saw the devoted guards of 
the palace drive the assailants out, doubtless heard Wes- 
termann and the brave courtesan, Theroigne de Mericourt, 
rally their forces and renew the assault; was amazed 
perhaps, when the Swiss ceased firing; and looked on 
while the triumphant Marseillaise broke into the palace. 
After the massacre, he walked through the Tuileries, 
piled with the Swiss dead, and was more impressed by 
the sight than he ever was by the dead on his own fields 



T EETURNS HOME 68 

of battle. He sauntered through the crowds and the 
neighboring cafes, and was so cool and indifferent that 
he aroused suspicion. He met a gang of patriots bear- 
ing a head on a pike. His manner did not, to this 
gang, indicate sufficient enthusiasm. " Shout, ' Live the 
nation,' " demanded the gang ; and Napoleon shouted, 
" Live the nation ! " 

He saw a man of Marseilles about to murder a wounded 
Swiss. He said, " Southron, let us spare the unfortunate." 
— "Art thou from the South? " — "Yes." — " Then we 
will spare him." 

According to Napoleon, if the King had appeared on 
horseback, — that is, dared to come forth and lead the 
defence, — he would have won the day. 

Other days of wrath Napoleon spent in Paris — the days 
of the September massacres. What he saw, heard, and felt 
is not known. Only in a general way is it known that 
during the idle summer in Paris, Napoleon lost many of 
his republican illusions. He conceived a horror of mob 
violence and popular license, which exerted a tremendous 
influence over him throughout his career. He lost faith 
in the purity and patriotism of the revolutionary leaders. 
He reached the conclusion that each man was for himself, 
that each one sought only his own advantage. For the 
people themselves, seeing them so easily led by lies, preju- 
dices, and passions, he expressed contempt. The Jacobins 
were, he thought, a "parcel of fools"; the leaders of the 
Revolution " a sorry lot." 

This sweepingly severe judgment was most unfortu- 
nate ; it bore bitter fruit for Napoleon and for France. 
He never ceased to believe that each man was governed 
by his interest — an opinion which is near the truth, but 



64 NAPOLEON chap. 

is not the truth. If the truth at all, it is certainly not 
the whole truth. 

Napoleon, with the independence of his native land 
ever in mind, wrote to his brother Joseph to cling to 
Paoli ; that events were tending to make him the all- 
powerful man, and might also evolve the independence of 
Corsica. 

During this weary period of waiting, Napoleon was 
often at the home of the Permons. On the 7th or 8th 
of August an emissary of the revolutionary government 
made his way into the Permon house without a warrant, 
and, because M. Permon refused to recognize his authority 
and threatened to take a stick to him, left in a rage to 
report against Permon. Napoleon, happening to call at 
this time, learned the fact, and hurried off to the section 
where he boldly denounced the illegal conduct of the 
officer. Permon was not molested further. 



The King became a prisoner of the revolutionists, the 
moderates fell from power, the radicals took the lead. 
Napoleon's case had already received attention, he had 
already been pronounced blameless, and he was now, 
August 30, 1792, restored to his place in the army, and 
promoted. He was not only made captain, but his com- 
mission and pay were made to date from February 6, 1792, 
at which time he would have been entitled to his promotion 
had he not fallen under official displeasure. Such prompt 
and flattering treatment of the needy officer by the radi- 
cals who had just upset the monarchy, gives one additional 
cause to suspect that Napoleon's relation to current events 
and Jacobin leaders was closer than the record shows. 



r RETURNS HOME 65 

It became good policy for him in after years to suppress 
the evidence of his revolutionary period. Thus he burnt 
the Lyons essay, and bought up, as he supposed, all copies 
of The Supper of Beaucaire. The conclusion is irresist- 
ible that the efforts to suppress have been more success- 
ful as to the summer of 1792 than in the other instances. • 
It is impossible to believe that Napoleon, who had been 
so hot in the garrison towns where he was stationed 
in France, and who had turned all Corsica topsy- 
turvy with democratic harangues and revolutionary plots, 
should have become a passionless gazer at the show in 
Paris. 

Whatever share he took, or did not take, in the events 
of the summer, he now turned homeward. The Assembly 
having abolished the St. Cyr school, where his sister 
Elisa was. Napoleon asked and was given leave to escort 
her back to Corsica. Travelling expenses were liberally 
provided by the State. Stopping at Valence, where he 
was warmly greeted by local friends, including Made- 
moiselle Bou to whom he owed a board bill, Napoleon and 
Elisa journeyed down the Rhone to Marseilles, and sailed 
for Corsica, which they reached on the 17th of Septem- 
ber, 1792. 

The situation of the Bonaparte family was much 
improved. The estate was larger, the revenues more 
satisfactory. Joseph was in office. Lucien was a lead- 
ing agitator in the Jacobin club. The estate of the 
rich uncle had helped things wonderfully. It must have 
been from this source that Napoleon derived the fine vine- 
yard of which he spoke to Las Cases, at St. Helena, as 
supplying him with funds — which vineyard he afterward 
gave to his old nurse. The position which his promo- 



66 NAPOLEON chap. 

tion in the army gave him ended the persecution which 
had virtually driven him from home ; and a reconciliation 
was patched up between him and Paoli. 

Napoleon insisted upon holding both his offices, — the 
captaincy in the regular army and the lieutenant colonelship 
in the Corsican National Guard. Paoli strongly objected ; 
but the younger man, partly by threats, carried his point. 
It may have been at this period that Paoli slightly modi- 
fied the Plutarch opinion ; he is said to have remarked : 
" You see that little fellow ? Well, he has in him the 
making of two or three men like Marius and one like 
Sulla ! " 

During his sojourn in Corsica, Napoleon took part in 
the luckless expedition which the French government sent 
against the island of Sardinia. The Corsican forces were 
put under the command of Paoli's nephew, Colonna-Csesari, 
whose orders, issued to him by Paoli, who strongly op- 
posed the enterprise, were, "See that this expedition ends in 
smoke." The nephew obeyed the uncle to the letter. In 
spite of Napoleon's good plan, in spite of his successful 
attack on the hostile forts, Colonna declared that his 
troops were about to mutiny, and he sailed back home. 

Loudly denouncing Colonna as a traitor. Napoleon bade 
adieu to his volunteers, and returned to Ajaccio. 

There was great indignation felt by the Jacobins against 
Paoli. He was blamed for the failure of the Sardinian 
expedition, for his luke-warmness toward the French Rev- 
olution, and for his alleged leaning to England. The 
September massacres, and the beheading of the King, had 
been openly denounced by the old hero, and he had exerted 
his influence in favor of conservatism in Corsica. The 
Bonaparte faction was much too rabid, and the Bonaparte 



V RETURNS HOME ,f}7 

brothers altogether too feverishly eager to push themselves 
forward. The friendship and mutual admiration which 
Napoleon and Paoli had felt for each other had cooled. 
Paoli had thrown ice water on the History of Corsica^ 
and had refused to supply the author with certain docu- 
ments needed in the preparation of that work. Neither 
had he approved the publication of the Letter to Butta- 
fuoco ; it was too bitter and violent. Again, his influ- 
ence seems to have been thrown against the Bonapartes at 
the Orezzo assembly. All these things had doubtless had 
their effect ; but the radical difference between the two 
men, Napoleon and Paoli, was one of Corsican policy. 
Napoleon wished to revolutionize the island, and Paoli did 
not. If Corsican independence could not be won, Napo- 
leon favored the French connection. Paoli, dismayed by 
the violence of the Revolution in France, favored connec- 
tion with England. 

It is said that Lucien Bonaparte, in the club at Ajaccio, 
denounced Paoli as a traitor. The club selected a delega' 
tion to go to Marseilles and denounce the old hero to the 
Jacobin clubs there. Lucien was a member of the dele- 
gation ; but after delivering himself a wild tirade against 
Paoli in Marseilles, he returned to Corsica. The delega- 
tion went on to Paris. In April, 1793, Paoli was formally 
denounced in the National Convention, and summoned to 
its bar for trial. 

At first Napoleon warmly defended Paoli, and drew up 
an impassioned address to the Convention in his favor. 
In this paper he expressly defends his old chief from the 
accusation of wishing to put Corsica into the hands of 
the English. 

Within two weeks after writing the defence of Paoli» 



68 NAPOLEON chap. 

Napoleon joined his enemies. What brought about this 
sudden change is not certain. His own excuse was that 
Paoli was seeking to throw the island to England. As 
a matter of fact, however, Napoleon's course at this 
period seems full of double dealing. For a time he did 
not have the confidence of either faction. 

Semonville, one of the French commissioners then in 
Corsica, related to Chancellor Pasquier, many years later, 
how Napoleon had come and roused him, in the middle 
of the night, to say : " Mr. Commissioner, I have come to 
say that I and mine will defend the cause of the union 
between Corsica and France. People here are on the 
point of committing follies ; the Convention has doubt- 
less committed a great crime " — in guillotining the King 
— "which I deplore more than any one; but whatever 
may happen, Corsica must always remain a part of 
France." 

As soon as this decision of the Bonapartes became 
known, the Paolists turned upon them savagely, and 
their position became difficult. The French commis- 
sioners, of whom the leader was Salicetti, appointed 
Napoleon inspector general of artillery for Corsica. He 
immediately set about the capture of the citadel of 
Ajaccio, the object of so much of his toil. Force failed, 
stratagem availed not, attempted bribery did not succeed ; 
the citadel remained untaken. Ajaccians bitterly resented 
his desertion of Paoli, and his life being in danger, 
Napoleon in disguise fled to Bastia. Indomitable in his 
purpose, he proposed to Salicetti's commission another 
plan for the seizure of the coveted citadel. Some French 
war vessels then at St. Florent were to surprise Ajaccio, 
land men and guns, and with the help of some Swiss 



y RETURNS HOME 60 

troops, and of such Corsicans as felt disposed to help, 
the citadel was to be taken. 

Paoli was warned, and he prepared for the struggle. 
The French war vessels sailed from St. Florent, Napoleon 
on board, and reached Ajaccio on May 29. It was too late. 
The Paolists, fully prepared, received the assailants with 
musketry. Napoleon captured an outpost, and held it 
for two days; but the vessels could not cooperate effi- 
ciently, and the assailants abandoned the attempt. Na- 
poleon joined his family at Calvi. They had fled from 
Ajaccio as Napoleon sailed to the attack, and the Paolists 
were so furiously enraged against them that their estates 
were pillaged and their home sacked. Paoli had made 
a last effort to conquer the resolution of Madame Letitia, 
but she was immovable. On June 11 the fugitives left 
Corsica for France, escaping from their enemies by hiding 
near the seashore till a boat could approach in the dark- 
ness of night and take them away. Jerome and Caroline 
were left behind, concealed by the Ramolinos. 

Napoleon himself narrowly escaped with his life. He 
was saved from a trap the Peraldis had set by the faith- 
fulness of the Bonaparte tenants. He was forced to dis- 
guise himself, and lay concealed till arrangements could 
be made for his flight. Far-seeing was the judgment 
and inflexible the courage which must have sustained 
him in cutting loose entirely from his first love, Corsica, 
and casting himself upon revolutionary France. For it 
would have been an easy matter for him to have gone 
with the crowd and been a great man in Corsica. 

In his will Napoleon left 100,000 francs to Costa, the 
loyal friend to whom he owed life at the time the Paolists 
were hounding him down as a traitor. 



CHAPTER VI 

rpHE French revolutionists had overturned the absolute 
monarchy of the Bourbons, but they themselves had 
split into factions. The Moderates who favored consti- 
tutional monarchy had been trodden under foot by the 
Girondins who favored a federated republic; and the 
Girondins, in their turn, had been crushed by the Jaco- 
bins who favored an undivided republic based upon the 
absolute political equality of all Frenchmen. To this doc- 
trine they welded State-socialism with a boldness which 
shocked the world at the time, and converted it a few 
years later. The Girondins did not yield without a strug- 
gle, drawing to themselves all disaffected elements, in- 
cluding the royalists ; and the revolt which followed was 
supported by the English. Threatened thus from within 
and without, the Revolution seemed doomed to perish. 

It was in the midst of this turmoil that the Bonapartes 
landed at Toulon in June, 1793. In a short while they 
removed to Marseilles. Warmly greeted by the Jacobins, 
who regarded them as martyrs to the good cause, the im- 
mediate necessities of the family were relieved by a small 
pension which the government had provided for such cases. 
Still, as they had fled in such haste from their house in 
Ajaccio that Madame Letitia had to snatch up the little 
Jerome and bear him in her arms, their condition upon 
reaching France was one of destitution. 

70 




NAPOLEON 

From an engraving by Tomkins of a drawing from life during the cam- 
paign in Italy. In tlie collection of Mr. W. C. Crane 



CHAP. VI FIRST SERVICE 71 

" One of the liveliest recollections of my youth," said 
Prince Napoleon, son of Jerome Bonaparte, " is the account 
my father gave of the arrival of our family in a miserable 
house situated in the lanes of Meilhan," a poor district 
of Marseilles. " They found themselves in the greatest 
poverty." 

Having arranged for the family as well as he could, 
Napoleon rejoined his regiment at Nice. To shield him- 
self from censure, on account of his prolonged absence, he 
produced Salicetti's certificate to the effect that the Com- 
missioner had kept him in Corsica. The statement was 
false, but served its purpose. So many officers had fled 
their posts, and affairs were so unsettled, that it was no 
time to reject offers of service; nor was it a good time 
to ride rough-shod over the certificate of so influential a 
Jacobin as Salicetti. 

Napoleon's first service in France was against the Giron- 
din revolt. At Avignon, which the insurgents held, and 
which the Convention forces had invested. Napoleon, who 
had been sent from Nice to secure necessary stores, was 
appointed to the command of a battery. Mr. Lanf rey 
says, " It is certain that with his own hands he pointed 
the cannons with which Carteaux cleared Avignon of the 
Marseilles federates." 

About this time it was that Napoleon came in contact 
with Augustin Robespierre, brother of the great man in 
Paris. The Convention had adopted the policy of sending 
commissioners to the armies to stimulate, direct, and report. 
Robespierre was at the head of one of these formidable 
delegations, and was now at Avignon in his official capacity. 
With him, but on a separate commission, were Salicetti 
and Gasparin. 



72 NAPOLEON chap. 

To these gentlemen Napoleon read a political pamphlet 
he had just finished, and which he called The Supper of 
Beaucaire. The pamphlet was a discussion of the politi- 
cal situation. The author threw it into the attractive and 
unusual form of a dialogue between several guests whom 
he supposed to have met at an inn in the town of Beau- 
caire. An actual occurrence of the sort was doubtless the 
basis of the pamphlet. 

A citizen of Nismes, two merchants of Marseilles, a 
manufacturer of Montpellier, and a soldier (supposed to 
be Napoleon), finding themselves at supper together, fell 
naturally into conversation and debate, the subject being 
the recent convulsions. The purpose of the pamphlet 
was to demonstrate the weakness of the insurgent cause, 
and the necessity of submission to the established authori- 
ties at Paris. 

The Commissioners were so well pleased with Napoleon's 
production that they ordered the work published at the 
expense of the government. Exerting himself in behalf 
of his family, Napoleon secured positions in the public 
service for Lucien, Joseph, and Uncle Fesch. 



Into the great seaport town of Toulon, thousands of the 
Girondin insurgents had thrown themselves. The royal- 
ists and the Moderates of the city made common cause 
with the revolting republicans, and England was ready 
to help hold the place against the Convention. 

The royalists, confident the counter-revolution had 
come, began to massacre the Jacobins in the town. The 
white flag of the Bourbons was run up, displacing the 
red, white, and blue. The little boy, son of Louis XVI., 



VI FIRST SERVICE 73 

who was lying in prison at Paris, was proclaimed king 
under the name of Louis XVII. Sir Samuel Hood, com- 
manding the British fleet, sailed into the harbor and took 
possession of about twenty-five French ships, " in trust " 
for the Bourbons ; General O'Hara hurried from Gibraltar 
with troops to aid in holding this "trust"; and to the 
support of the English flocked Spaniards, Sardinians, and 
Neapolitans. Even the Pope could not withhold his help- 
ing hand ; he sent some priests to lend their prayers and 
exhortations. 

When it became known throughout France that Tou- 
lon had revolted, had begun to exterminate patriots, had 
proclaimed a Bourbon king, had surrendered to the Brit- 
ishxthe arsenal, the harbor, the immense magazines, and 
the Vrench fleet, a tide of furious resentment rose against 
the town. There was but one thought: Toulon must 
be taken, Toulon must be punished. The hunger for 
revenge said it ; the promptings of self-preservation 
said it ; the issue was one of life or death to the Revo- 
lution. 

The Convention realized the crisis ; the Great Commit- 
tee realized it ; and the measures taken were prompt. 
Commissioners hurried to the scene, and troops poured in. 
Barras, a really effective man in sudden emergencies, 
Freron, Salicetti, Gasparin, Ricord, Albitte, and Robes- 
pierre the Younger were all on hand to inspirit the army 
and direct events. Some twenty odd thousand soldiers 
soon beleagured the town. They were full of courage, 
fire, and enthusiasm ; but their commander was a painter, 
Carteaux, whose ideas of war were very primitive. To 
find where the enemy was, and then cannonade him vigor- 
ously, and then fall on him with muskets, was about the 



74 NAPOLEON chap. 

substance of Carteaux' military plans. At Toulon, owing 
to peculiarities of the position, such a plan was not as 
excellent as it might have been at some other places. 
Besides, he had no just conception of the means needed 
for such a work as he had undertaken. Toulon, with its 
double harbor, the inner and the outer, its defences by- 
land and by sea, to say nothing of the fortresses which 
Lord Mulgrave had constructed on the strip of land 
which separated and commanded the two harbors, pre- 
sented difficulties which demanded a soldier. Carteaux 
was brave and energetic, but no soldier ; and week after 
week wasted away without any material progress having 
been made in the siege. 

Near the middle of September, 1793, Napoleon appeared 
at Toulon, — at just the right moment, — for the artillery 
service had well-nigh broken down. General Duteuil, 
who was to have directed it, had not arrived ; and Dom- 
martin had been disabled by a wound. How did Napo- 
leon, of the army of Italy, happen to be at Toulon at 
this crisis ? The question is one of lasting interest, 
because his entire career pivots on Toulon. Mr. Lanfrey 
states that, on his way from Avignon to Nice, Napoleon 
stopped at Toulon, was invited by the Commissioners to 
inspect the works, and so won upon them by his intelli- 
gent comments, criticisms, and suggestions, that they 
appointed him at once to a command. 

Napoleon's own account of the matter was that the 
Minister of War sent him to Toulon to take charge of 
the artillery, and that it was with written authority that 
he confronted Carteaux, who was not at all pleased to see 
him. " This vi^as not necessary ! " exclaimed Carteaux. 
" Nevertheless, you are welcome. You will share the 



Ti FIRST SERVICE 7g 

glory of taking the town without having borne any of the 
toil ! " 

But the biographers are almost unanimous in refusing to 
credit this account. Why Napoleon should have falsified 
it, is not apparent. Mr. Lanfrey says that Napoleon's 
reason for not wishing to admit that the Commissioners 
appointed him was that he was unwilling to own that he 
had been under obligations to Salicetti. But Salicetti was 
only one of the Commissioners ; he alone could not appoint. 
So far was Napoleon from being ashamed to acknowledge 
debts of gratitude that he never wearied of adding to the 
list. In his will he admits what he owed to the protec- 
tion of Gasparin at this very period, and left a legacy of 
$20,000 to that Commissioner's son.. Hence Mr. Lan- 
f rey's reasoning is not convincing. Napoleon surely ought 
to have known how he came to be at Toulon, and his nar- 
rative is natural, is seemingly truthful, and is most positive. 

But these recent biographers who dig and delve, and 
turn things over, and find out more about them a century 
after the occurrences than the men who took part in 
them ever knew, assert most emphatically that both Mr. 
Lanfrey and Napoleon are wrong. They insist that the 
way it all happened was this : After Dommartin was 
wounded, Adjutant General Cervoni, a Corsican, was sent 
to Marseilles to hunt around and find a capable artillery 
officer. Apparently it was taken for granted by whoever 
sent Cervoni, that capable artillery officers were straggling 
about at random, and could be found b}'' diligent searchers 
in the lanes and by-ways of towns and cities. We are told 
that Cervoni, arrived in Marseilles, was strolling the 
streets, his eyes ready for the capable artillery officer, — 
when, who should he see coming down the road, dusty 



76 NAPOLEON chap. 

and worn, but his fellow-Corsican, Napoleon Bonaparte ! 
Here, indeed, was a capable artillery officer, one who had 
just been to Avignon, and was on his way back to Nice. 

That Cervoni should at once invite the dusty Napoleon 
into a cafe to take a drink of punch was quite as natural 
as any other part of this supernatural yarn. While drink- 
ing punch, Cervoni tells Napoleon his business, and urges 
him to go to Toulon and take charge of the artillery. 
And this ardently ambitious young man, who is yearning 
for an opening, is represented as at first declining the 
brilliant opportunity Cervoni thrusts upon him ! But at 
length punch, persuasion, and sober second thought soften 
Napoleon, and he consents to go. 

All this you may read in some of the most recent works 
of the diggers and delvers ; and you may believe it, if 
you are very, very credulous. 



The arrival on the scene of an educated artillery officer 
like Napoleon, one whose handling of his guns at Avignon 
had achieved notable success, was a welcome event. His 
friends, the Commissioners, took him over the field of 
operations to show him the placing and serving of the 
batteries. He was astonished at the crude manner in 
which all the arrangements had been made, and pointed 
out the errors to the Commissioners. First of all, the 
batteries were not in range of the enemy ; the balls fell 
into the sea, far short of the mark. " Let us try a proof- 
shot," said Napoleon ; and luckily he used a technical term, 
coup cfSpreuve. Favorably impressed with this scientific 
method of expression, the Commissioners and Carteaux 
consented. The proof -shot was fired, and the ball fell 



VI FIRST SERVICE 77 

harmlessly into the sea, less than halfway to its mark. 
" Damn the aristocrats ! " said Carteaux ; " they have 
spoilt our powder." 

But the Commissioners had lost faith in Carteaux' man- 
agement of the artillery ; they determined to put Napo 
lebn in charge of it. 

On the 29th of September, Gasparin and Salicetti recom- 
mended his promotion to the rank of major, and on the 
next day they reported that Bonaparte was "the only 
artillery captain able to grasp the operations." 

From the first Napoleon threw his whole heart into his 
work. He never seemed to sleep or to rest. He never 
left his batteries. If exhausted, he wrapped himself in 
his cloak, and lay down on the ground beside the guns. 

From Lyons, Grenoble, Briangon, he requisitioned addi- 
tional material. From the army of Italy he got more can- 
non. From Marseilles he took horses and workmen, to 
make gabions, hurdles, and fascines. Eight bronze guns 
he took from Martigues ; timbers from La Seyne ; horses 
from Nice, Valence, and Montpellier. At the ravine called 
Ollioules he established an arsenal with forty workmen, 
blacksmiths, wheelwrights, carpenters, all busy making 
those things the army needed ; also a gunsmith's shop for 
the repair of muskets ; and he took steps to reestablish 
the Dardennes gun foundry. 

Thus he based his hopes of success upon work^ intense, 
well-directed, comprehensive work. All possible precau- 
tions were taken, all possible preparations made, every 
energy bent to bring to bear those means necessary to the 
end. Nothing was left to chance, good luck, providence, 
or inspiration. Cold calculation governed all, tireless 
labor provided all, colossal driving force moved it all. In 



78 NAPOLEON chap. 

ever so short a time, Napoleon was felt to be " the soul of 
the siege." In November he was made acting commander 
of the artillery. Carteaux had been dismissed, and to the 
painter succeeded a doctor named Doppet. The physician 
had sense enough to soon see that an easier task than the 
taking of Toulon would be an agreeable change, and he 
asked to be sent elsewhere. To him succeeded Dugom- 
mier, an excellent soldier of the old school. Dutiel, offi- 
cial commander of the artillery, at length arrived, and he 
was so well pleased with Napoleon's work that he did not 
interfere. 

The Committee of Public Safety, sitting in Paris, had 
sent a plan of operations, the main idea of which was a 
complete investment of the town. This would have re- 
quired sixty thousand troops, whereas Dugommier had 
but twenty-five thousand. But he dared not disobey the 
terrible Committee. Between the loss of Toulon and his 
own head he wavered painfully. A council of war met. 
The Commissioners of the Convention were present, among 
them Barras, Ricord, and Freron. Officers of the army 
thought the committee plan bad, but hesitated to say so in 
plain words. One, and the youngest, spoke out ; it was 
Napoleon. He pointed to the map lying unrolled on the 
table, explained that Toulon's defence depended on the 
British fleet, that the fleet could not stay if a land battery 
commanded the harbor, and that by seizing a certain point, 
the French would have complete mastery of the situation. 
On that point on the map he put his finger, saying, 
"There is Toulon." 

He put his plan in writing, and it was sent to the war 
office in Paris. A second council of war adopted his 
views, and ordered him to put them into execution. 



VI FIRST SERVICE 79 

The English, had realized the importance of the strategic 
point named by Napoleon, and they had already fortified 
it. The redoubt was known as Fort Mulgrave ; also as 
Little Gibraltar. 

On the 30th of November the English made a desperate 
attempt to storm Napoleon's works. They were repulsed, 
and their leader, General O'Hara, was taken prisoner. At 
St. Helena Napoleon said that he himself had seized the 
wounded Englishman and drawn him within the French 
lines. This statement appears to have been one of his 
fancy sketches. Others say that General O'Hara was 
taken by four obscure privates of Suchet's battalion. 

A cannoneer having been killed by his side. Napoleon 
seized the rammer and repeatedly charged the gun. The 
dead man had had the itch ; Napoleon caught it, and was 
not cured until he became consul. 

Constantly in the thick of the fighting, he got a bayonet 
thrust in the thigh. He fell into the arms of Colonel 
Muiron, who bore him to a place of safety. Napoleon 
showed the scar to O'Meara at St. Helena. 

It was at Toulon that fame first took up that young 
dare-devil, Junot, whom Napoleon afterward spoiled by 
lifting him too high. 

Supping with some brother officers near the batteries, a 
shell from the enemy fell into the tent, and was about to 
burst, when Junot rose, glass in hand, and exclaimed, " I 
drink to those who are about to die ! " The shell burst, 
one poor fellow was killed, and Junot drank, "To the 
memory of a hero ! " 

Some days after this incident Junot volunteered to make 
for Napoleon a very dangerous reconnoissance. " Go in 
civilian's dress ; your uniform will expose you to too much 



80 NAPOLEON chap. 

risk." — "No," replied Junot, "I will not shrink from the 
chance of being shot like a soldier; but I will not risk 
being hanged like a spy." The reconnoissance made, 
Junot came to Napoleon to report. " Put it in writing," 
said Napoleon ; and Junot, using the parapet of the battery 
as a desk, began to write. As he finished the first page, a 
shot meant for him struck the parapet, covering him and 
the paper with earth. " Polite of these English," he cried, 
laughing, "to send me some sand just when I wanted it." 
Before very long Napoleon was a general, and Junot was 
his aide-de-camp. 

On December 17 everything was ready for the grand 
assault on the English works. Between midnight and 
day, and while a rainstorm was raging, the forts, which 
for twenty-four hours had been bombarded by five batter- 
ies, were attacked by the French. Repulsed at the first 
onset, Dugommier's nerve failed him, and he cried, " I am 
a lost man," thinking of that terrible committee in 
Paris which would cut off his head. Fresh troops were 
hurried up, the attack renewed, and Little Gibraltar 
taken. Thus Napoleon's first great military success was 
won in a fair square fight with the English. 

Assaults on other points in the line of defence had also 
been made, and had succeeded ; and Toulon was at the 
mercy of Napoleon's batteries. The night that followed 
was one of the most frightful in the annals of war. The 
English fleet was no longer safe in the harbor, and was 
preparing to sail away. Toulon was frantic with terror. 
The royalists, the Girondins, the refugees from Lyons and 
Marseilles, rushed from their homes, crowded the quays, 
making every effort to reach the English ships. The 
Jacobins of the town, now that their turn had come, made 



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VI FIRST SERVICE 81 

the most of it, and pursued the royalists, committing every 
outrage which hate and lust could prompt. Prisoners 
broke loose, to rob, to murder, to ravish. The town be- 
came a pandemonium. Fathers, mothers, children, rushed 
wildly for safety to the quays, screaming with terror, and 
plunging into the boats in the maddest disorder. And all 
this while the guns, the terrible guns of Napoleon, were 
playing on the harbor and on the town, the balls crashing 
through dwellings, or cutting lanes through the shrieking 
fugitives on the quays, or sinking the boats which were 
carrying the wretched outcasts away. The English set 
fire to the arsenal, dockyard, and such ships as could not 
be carried off, and the glare shone far and wide over the 
ghastly tumult. Intensifying the horror of this hideous 
night came the deafening explosion of the magazine ships, 
and the rain of the fragments they scattered over all the 
£'irrounding water. 

Some fourteen thousand of the inhabitants of Toulon 
fled with the English; some other thousands must have 
perished in the bombardment and in the butcheries of 
ithe days that followed. Toulon's baseness had aroused 
^he ire, the diabolism of the Revolution, and the vilest 
men of all her ravening pack were sent to wreak revenge. 
' There was Barras, the renegade noble ; Freron, the Marat 
in ferocity without Marat's honesty or capacity ; Fouche, 
the renegade priest. And the other Commissioners were 
almost as ferocious; while from the Convention itself 
came the voice of Barere demanding the total destruc- 
tion of Toulon. Great was the sin of the doomed city ; 
ghastly was its punishment. Almost indiscriminately 
people were herded and mown down with musketry. 

On one of the days which ensued, Fouche wrote to his 



82 NAPOLEON chap. 

friend, Collot d'Herbois : " We have sent to-day 213 rebels 
to hell fire. Tears of joy run down my cheeks and flood 
my soul." Royalist writers do not fail to remind the 
reader that this miscreant, Fouche, became minister of 
police to Napoleon. They omit the statement that he 
was used by Louis XVIII. in the same capacity. 

Napoleon exerted himself to put a stop to these atroc- 
ities, but he was as yet without political influence, and 
he could do nothing. Some unfortunates he rescued 
from his own soldiers, and secretly sent away. He was 
forced to witness the execution of one old man of eighty- 
four, whose crime was that he was a millionnaire. "When 
I saw this," said Napoleon afterward, "it seemed to me 
that the end of the world had come." 

In his spiteful Memoirs^ Barras labors hard to draw a 
repulsive portrait of the Napoleon of Toulon. The 
young officer is represented as bustling about with a 
bundle of his Supper of Beaucaire, handing copies 
right and left to officers and men. He is made to pro- 
fess rank Jacobinism, and to allude to Robespierre and 
Marat as "my saints." He pays servile court to the 
wife of Commissioner Ricord, and to the Convention 
potentates generally. Of course he was on his knees to 
Barras. That lofty magnate stoops low enough to men- 
tion, as a matter detrimental to Napoleon, that his uniform 
was worn out and dirty — as if a tattered and soiled uni- 
form at the close of such a siege, such herculean ; work, 
could have been anything but a badge of honor to 
the soldier who wore it ! Dugommier's official report 
on the taking of Toulon contains no mention of ! Napo- 
leon by name, but he uses this expression, " Tl^e fire 
from our batteries, directed with the greatest talent," 



Ti FIRST SERVICE 8S 

etc. This allusion could have been to no other than to 
Napoleon. 

To the minister of war Duteil wrote on December 19, 
1793, " I cannot find words to describe the merit of 
Bonaparte ; a considerable amount of science, just as 
much intelligence, and too much bravery, such is a feeble 
outline of the virtues of that rare officer." 

The Commissioners themselves, whose names crowded 
the name of Bonaparte out of the official report, recog- 
nized his services by at once nominating him to the post 
of general of brigade. 



English authors dwell extensively on Napoleon's hatred 
of their country : do they never recall the origin of the 
feeling ? Had not England deceived old Paoli, crushed 
the opposite faction, and treated Corsica as a conquest ? 
Was it not the English faction which had sacked the 
home, confiscated the property, and sought the lives of 
the Bonaparte family ? Had not England been striving 
to force the Bourbons back on France ; had it not seized 
the French ships at Toulon " in trust " ; had it not then 
given to the flames not only the ships, but dockyards, 
arsepals, and magazines ? Did not William Pitt, in the 
King's speech of 1794, include among the subjects of con- 
gratulation " the circumstances attending the evacuation 
of Toulon " ? Had not England, in 1793, bargained with 
Austria to despoil France and divide the booty : Austria 
to have Alsace and Lorraine ; and England to have the 
foreign settlements and colonies of France ? " His 
Majesty " (of England) " has an interest in seeing the 
house of Austria strengthen itself by acquisitions on the 



84 NAPOLEON char 

French frontier ; the Emperor " (of Austria) " must see 
with pleasure the relative increase of the naval and com- 
mercial resources of this country " (England) " over those 
of France." 

Historians have long said that England's war with 
Prance was forced upon her, that it was defensive. Does 
the language just quoted (official despatches) sound like 
the terms of self-defence ? It is the language of aggres- 
sion, of unscrupulous conquest ; and the spirit which dic- 
tated this bargain between two powers to despoil a third 
is the same which gave life to each successive combination 
against the French Republic and the Napoleonic Empire. 

Like master, like man : the British ministry having 
adopted the policy of blind and rancorous hostility in 
dealing with France, the same fury of hatred pervaded 
the entire public service. Edmund Burke and William 
Pitt inoculated the whole nation. " Young gentlemen," 
said Nelson to his midshipmen, " among the things you 
must constantly bear in mind is to hate a Frenchman as 
you would the devil." At another time, the same illus- 
trious Englishman declared, " I hate all Frenchmen ; they 
are equally the object of my detestation, whether royalists 
or republicans." Writing to the Duke of Clarence, he 
stated : " To serve my king and to destroy the French, I 
consider the great order of all. . . . Down, down with 
the damned French villains ! My blood boils at the name 
of Frenchman ! " At Naples he exclaimed, " Down, 
down with the French ! is my constant prayer." 

I quote Nelson simply because he was a controlling fac- 
tor in these wars, a representative Englishman, a man in 
full touch with the policy, purpose, and passion of his 
ofovernraent. 



VI FIRST SERVICE 85 

Consider England's bargain with Austria ; consider her 
bribes to Prussia to continue the struggle when even 
Austria had withdrawn ; consider the animus of such lead- 
ing actors as Burke and Nelson — is it any wonder that 
Napoleon regarded Great Britain as the one irreconcilable 
and mortal enemy of France ? 

And what was England's grievance ? Her rival across 
the Channel had overturned a throne, slain a king, and 
proclaimed principles which were at war with established 
tyranny. But had England never upset a throne, slain a 
king, and proclaimed a republic ? 

Was it any matter of rightful concern to Great Britain 
that France had cast out the Bourbons, and resorted to 
self-government? Did England, by any law human or 
divine, have the right to impose her own will upon a 
sister state ? Was she right in seizing and destroying the 
French fleet at Toulon, which she had accepted as a trust ? 
Unless all these can be answered Yes, Napoleon deserves 
no deep damnation for his hatred of Great Britain. 



CHAPTER VII 

TIHE Mediterranean coast of France being almost at the 
mercy of the English fleet, Napoleon was sent, im- 
mediately after the fall of Toulon, to inspect the defences 
and put them into proper condition. He threw into 
this task the same activity and thoroughness which had 
marked him at Toulon, and in a short while the coast 
and the coasting trade were secure from attack. 

His duties carried him to Marseilles, where he found 
that a fortress necessary to the defence of the harbor 
and town had been dismantled by the patriots, who de- 
tested it as a local Bastille. Napoleon advised that the 
fortifications be restored "so as to command the town." 
This raised a storm. The Marseilles Jacobins denounced 
Bonaparte to the Convention. By that body he was sum- 
moned to appear at its bar. He had no inclination to 
take such a risk, and hastened to Toulon, where he put 
himself under the protection of Salicetti and Augustin 
Robespierre. At their instance he wrote to the Paris 
Authorities an exculpatory letter, and the storm blew over. 

In March, 1794, Napoleon returned to headquarters 
at Nice. By his influence over the Commissioners of 
the Convention, young Robespierre in particular, he be- 
came the dominant spirit of the army of Italy. 

General Dumerbion, commander-in-chief, a capable offi- 
cer but too old, had been wasting time, or the strength 

86 



CHAP. Til AT MARSEILLES 87 

of his troops, for several montlis, in attacks upon the 
enemy (Piedmontese and Austrians) who were intrenched 
at the foot of the maritime Alps. Despondent after 
repeated failures, officers and men were contenting them- 
selves with holding their positions, and conducting such 
operations as were consistent with extreme prudence. 
Napoleon had no sooner made a careful study of the posi- 
tions of the opposing forces, than he drew up a plan of 
campaign, and submitted it to the commander-in-chief 
and the Commissioners. In a council of war it was 
discussed and approved. Early in April, the army was 
in motion ; the position of the enemy was to be turned. 
Massena led the corps which was to do what fighting was 
necessary. The enemy was beaten in two engagements, 
and Piedmont entered by the victorious French, who 
then turned back toward the Alps. The communications 
between Piedmont and the fortified camps of the enemy 
being thus endangered, they abandoned them without a 
fight; and thus in a campaign of a month the French won 
command of the whole range of the Alps, which had so 
long resisted every attack in front. 

At this time the Bonaparte family was living in Nice, 
and Napoleon, during the months of May and June, 1794, 
spent much of his time with his mother and sisters. Uncle 
Fesch, Joseph, and Lucien were in good positions ; and 
Napoleon secured for Louis, by the telling of some false- 
hoods and the use of the influence of Salicetti, the rank 
of lieutenant in the army. Louis was represented as hav- 
ing served as a volunteer at Toulon, and as having been 
wounded there. As a matter of fact, Louis had visited 
Napoleon during the siege, but had not served, and had 
not been wounded. 



88 NAPOLEON chap. 

Joseph Bonaparte was made war commissioner of the 
first class. Napoleon, in securing him the place, repre- 
sented Joseph as being the holder of the commission of 
lieutenant colonel of Corsican volunteers, the commis- 
sion which Napoleon had won for himself at such a 
cost in his native land. The fraud was discovered later 
on ; but, for the present, his brother Joseph was snugly- 
berthed. 

In July, 1794, Napoleon went to Genoa on a twofold 
mission. That republic, which was wholly controlled by 
a few rich families, had been giving aid and comfort to 
the enemies of republican France. The English and the 
Austrians had been allowed to violate Genoa's neutrality. 
Also, the English had been permitted to set up an estab- 
lishment for the manufacture of counterfeit assignats — 
that peculiar policy of the British ministry which had 
been used with good effect against the revolted American 
colonies. Besides, there was a complaint that certain 
stores bought from Genoa, and paid for, had not been 
delivered to the French. 

Ostensibly, therefore. Napoleon's mission was about the 
stores which Genoa withheld, and about the neutrality 
which she was allowing to be violated. But within this 
purpose lay another. Genoa, and her neutrality was an 
obstacle to French military plans ; she was weak, and the 
temptation to seize upon her was strong. Napoleon 
while at Genoa was to look about him with the keen 
eyes of a military expert, and to form an opinion as to 
the ease with which the little republic could be made the 
victim of a sudden spring. 

This mission, which bears an unpleasant resemblance to 
that of a spy, was undertaken at the instance of the 



VII • AT MARSEILLES 89 

younger Robespierre. Salicetti and Albitte had not been 
consulted, and knew nothing of the secret instructions 
given to Napoleon. Suddenly recalled to Paris by his 
brother, Robespierre wished to take with him the young 
officer whose "transcendent merit" he had applauded. 
With Napoleon to command the Paris troops, instead of 
Henriot, the Robespierres might confidently expect victory 
in the crisis they saw coming. But it was a part of Na- 
poleon's " transcendent merit " to possess excellent judg- 
ment, and he declined to go to Paris. So the friends 
parted : the one to visit little Genoa and bully its feeble 
Doge, the other to return to the raging capital and to 
meet sudden death there in generous devotion to his 
brother. 

Napoleon reached Nice again, July 21, 1794, after his 
successful mission to Genoa, and in a few days later came 
the crash. The Robespierres were overthrown, and the 
Bonapartes, classed with that faction, fell with it. Napo- 
leon was put under arrest ; his brothers thrown out of 
employment. For some reason Salicetti and Albitte, pre- 
viously so friendly to Napoleon, had turned upon him, had 
denounced him to the Convention, and had signed the 
order of arrest — an order almost equivalent to a death 
warrant. 

It was a stunning, unexpected blow. Madame Junot, in 
her Memoirs, hints that the traditional woman was at the 
bottom of it ; that the younger man. Napoleon, had found 
favor in the eyes of a lady who looked coldly upon the 
suit of Salicetti. But this explanation does not explain 
the hostility of other commissioners, for members of two 
separate commissioners signed against Napoleon. Surely 
he had not cut them all off from the smiles of their ladies. 



90 NAPOLEON chap. 

No ; it would seem that Napoleon owed his tumble to the 
fact that he was standing upon the Robespierre scaffold- 
ing when it fell. He merely fell with it. 

He was known as a Robespierre man, and to a very- 
great extent he was. He had been put under heavy 
obligations by the younger brother whom he liked, and 
he did not believe that the elder was at heart a bad man. 
He had seen private letters which the elder brother had 
written to the younger, in which letters the crimes of the 
more rabid and corrupt revolutionists were deplored, 
and the necessity for moderation and purity expressed. 
Among those who befouled the names of the Robespierres, 
either then or afterward, Napoleon is not to be found. 
He understood well enough that the convulsion of July 
27, 1794 (Thermidor), was the work of a gang of scoun- 
drels (Barras, Fouche, Carrier, Tallien, Billaud, Collot), 
who took advantage of circumstances to pull down a man 
who had threatened to punish them for their crimes. 
Napoleon believed then and afterward that Robespierre 
had been a scapegoat, and that he had not been respon- 
sible for the awful days of the Terror in June and July 
1794. The manly constancy with which he always clung 
to his own estimates of men and events is shown by the 
way in which he spoke well of the Robespierre brothers 
when all others damned them, and by his granting Char- 
lotte Robespierre a pension at a time when the act could 
not have been one of policy. Marvellous was the com- 
plexity of Napoleon's character ; but like a thread of gold 
runs through all the tangled warp and woof of his life 
the splendid loyalty with which he remembered those 
who had ever been kind to him. Not once did he ever 
pursue a foe and take revenge so far as I can discover ; 



Til AT MARSEILLES 91 

not once did he ever fail to reward a friend, so far as 
tlie record is known. 

Napoleon's arrest created such indignation among the 
young officers of the army of Italy that a scheme for his 
forcible release was broached. Junot, Marmont, and 
other ardent friends were to take him out of prison and 
flee with him into Genoese territory. Napoleon would 
not hear of it. " Do nothing," he wrote Junot. " You 
would only compromise me." 

Junot the hot-headed, Junot the tender-hearted, was 
beside himself with grief ; and he wept like a child as he 
told the bad news to Madame Letitia. 

But Napoleon himself was not idle. He knew that to 
be sent to Paris for trial at that time was almost like 
going to the scaffold, and he made his appeal directly to 
the Commissioners. By name he addressed Salicetti and 
Albitte, in words manly, bold, and passionate, protesting 
against the wrong done him, demanding that they investi- 
gate the case, and appealing to his past record and ser- 
vices for proofs of his republican loyalty. This protest 
had its effect. Salicetti himself examined Napoleon's 
papers, and found nothing against him. The suspicious 
trip to Genoa was no longer suspicious, for his official 
instructions for that trip were found. 

After an imprisonment of about two weeks, he was 
released, but his employment was gone. He still held 
his rank in the army, but he was not on duty. It was 
only as an adviser and spectator that he remained, and, 
at the request of Dumerbion, furnished a plan of cam- 
paign, which was successful to the extent that Dumerbion 
pushed it. He did not push it far enough to gain any 
very solid advantages, much to Napoleon's disgust. 



92 NAPOLEON chap. 

It was at this time that the incident occurred which he 
related at St. Helena. He was taking a stroll with the 
wife of the influential Commissioner Turreau, when it 
occurred to him to divert and interest her by giving her 
an illustration of what war was like. Accordingly he 
gave orders to a French outpost to attack the Austrian 
pickets. It was a mere whim ; the attack could not lead 
to anything. It was done merely to entertain a lady 
friend. The soldiers could but obey orders. The attack 
was made and resisted. There was a little battle, and 
there were soldiers wounded, there were soldiers killed. 
And the entertainment which the lady got out of it was 
the sole other result of the attack. 

It was Napoleon who told this story on himself : he de- 
clared that he had never ceased to regret the occurrence. 

Corsican affairs now claimed attention for a moment 
in the counsels of the government at Paris (September, 
1794). For after the Bonapartes had fled the island, 
Paoli had called the English in. The old hero intended 
that there should be a protectorate, thought that Eng- 
land would be satisfied with an arrangement of that sort, 
and that he, Paoli, would be left in control as viceroy or 
something of the kind. But the English had no idea of 
putting forth their strength for any such halfway pur- 
pose. They intended that Corsica should belong to Eng- 
land, and that an English governor should rule it. They 
intrigued with Paoli's stanch friend, Pozzo di Borgo, and 
Pozzo became a convert to the English policy. King 
George III. of England wrote Paoli a polite and pressing 
invitation to visit England, and Paoli accepted. 

England bombarded and took the remaining French 
strongholds (February, 1794), went into quiet and peace- 



VII AT MARSEILLES 93 

able possession of the island, and appointed Sir Gilbert 
Elliott, governor. Of course Paoli's stanch friend, Pozzo 
di Borgo, was not forgotten ; he was made president of 
the state council under Elliott. 

When commissioners from Paris game to the head- 
quarters of the army of Italy, instructed to suspend the 
operations of the army and to prepare for an expedition 
against Corsica, Napoleon saw an opportunity to get back 
into active service again. He sought and obtained, per- 
haps by the favor of Salicetti, command of the artillery 
for the expedition. Great preparations were made at 
Toulon to organize the forces and to equip the fleet. In 
this work Napoleon was intensely engaged for several 
months. His mother and the younger children took up 
their residence in pleasant quarters near Antibes, and 
he was able to enjoy the luxury of the home circle while 
getting ready to drive the English out of Corsica. In 
due time the French fleet set sail; in due time it did 
what French fleets have usually done — failed dismally. 
The English were on the alert, swooped down, and 
captured two French vessels. The others ran to shelter 
under the guns of shore forts. The conquest of Corsica 
was postponed. 



CHAPTER VIII 

TT must have been a sadly disappointed young man wlio 
rejoined his family, now at Marseilles, in the spring of 
1795. Gone was the Toulon glory; gone the prestige 
of the confidential friend of commissioners who governed 
France. Barely escaping with his life from the Robes- 
pierre wreck, here he now was, stranded by the failure, the 
miserable collapse, of an expedition from which so much 
had been expected. Very gloomy must have been Napo- 
leon's " yellowish green " face, very sombre those piercing 
eyes, as he came back to his seat at the hearth of the 
humble home in Marseilles. Ten years had passed since 
he had donned his uniform;- they had been years of 
unceasing effort, painful labor, and repeated failure. A 
demon of ill-luck had dogged his footsteps, foiled him at 
every turn, made null all his well-laid plans. Even suc- 
cess had come to him only to mock him and then drop 
him to a harder fall. Not only had he lost ground, but 
his brothers had been thrown out of the places he had 
obtained for them. In the midst of these discourage- 
ments came another : Lacombe St. Michel, a commissioner 
who bore him no good-will, urged the government to 
remove him from the army of Italy and to transfer him 
to the West. An order to that effect had been issued. 
This transfer would take him away from an army where 
he had made some reputation and some friends, and 

94 



CHAP. VIII 13th of VENDl&MIAIRE 95 

from a field of operations with which he was thoroughly- 
familiar. It would put him in La Vendee, where the war 
was the worst of all wars, — civil strife, brother against 
brother, Frenchman against Frenchman, — and it would 
put him under the command of a masterful young man 
named Hoche. 

Absolutely determined not to go to this post, and yet 
desperately tenacious in his purpose of keeping his feet 
upon the ladder. Napoleon set out for Paris early in May, 
1795, to exert himself with the authorities. In the capital 
he had some powerful friends, Barras and Freron among 
them. Other friends he could make. In a government 
where committees ruled, and where the committees were 
undergoing continual changes, everything was possible to 
one who could work, and wait, and intrigue. Therefore 
to Paris he hastened, taking with him his aides Junot and 
Marmont, and his brother Louis. 

Lodged in a cheap hotel, he set himself to the task 
of getting the order of transfer cancelled. A general 
overhauling of the army list had been going on recently, 
and many changes were being made. Napoleon's was 
not an isolated case. The mere transfer from one army 
to the other, his rank not being lowered, was, in itself, no 
disgrace ; but Aubrey, who was now at the head of the 
war committee, decided upon a step which became a real 
grievance. The artillery service was overstocked with 
officers ; it became necessary to cut down this surplus ; 
and Napoleon, as a junior officer, was ordered to the army 
of the West as general of a brigade of infantry. 

Napoleon regarded this as an insult, a serious injury, 
and he never forgave the minister who dealt him the blow. 
Aubrey had been a Girondin, and was at heart a royalist 



96 NAPOLEON chap. 

He knew Napoleon to be a Jacobin, if not a Terrorist. 
Without supposing that there were any causes for personal 
ill-will, here were sufficient grounds for positive dislike in 
times so hot as those. In vain Napoleon applied in person, 
and brought to bear the powerful influence of Barras, Fre- 
ron, and the Bishop of Marboz. Either his advocates were 
lukewarm, or his cause was considered weak. Neither 
from the full committee nor from Aubrey could any con- 
cession be wrung. Aubrey, himself a soldier of the per- 
functory, non-combative sort, believed that Napoleon had 
■ been advanced too rapidly. " You are too young to be 
commander-in-chief of artillery," he said to the little 
Corsican. " Men age fast on the field of battle," was the 
retort "which widened the breach ; — for Aubrey had not 
come by any of his age on fields of battle. 

Foiled in his attempt on the committees as then consti- 
tuted, Napoleon's only hope was to wait until these mem- 
bers should go out and others come in by the system of 
rotation. 

In the meantime he stuck to Paris with supple tenacity. 
By producing certificates of ill-health, he procured and then 
lengthened leave of absence from this obnoxious post in 
the West. He clung to old friends, and made new ones. 
Brother Lucien having been cast into prison as a rabid 
Jacobin, Napoleon was able to secure his release. Per- 
emptory orders were issued that Napoleon should go to 
his post of duty, but he succeeded, through his friends, in 
evading the blow. Louis, however, lost his place as lieu- 
tenant, and was sent back to school at Chalons. 

In spite of all his courage and his resources. Napoleon 
became, at times, very despondent. He wrote his brother 
Joseph that " if this continues, I shall not care to get out 



vm 13th of VENDfiMIAIRE 9? 

of the way of the carriages as they pass." The faithful 
Junot shared with his chief the money he received from 
home, and also his winnings at the gaming table ; — for 
Junot was a reckless gambler, and, being young, sometimes 
had good luck. Bourrienne and Talma may also have 
made loans to Napoleon in these days of distress, but this 
is not so certain. There is a letter which purports to have 
been from Napoleon to Talma, asking the loan of a few 
crowns, and offering repayment " out of the first kingdom 
I win with my sword." But Napoleon himself declared 
that he did not meet Talma before the time of the 
consulate. 

Idle, unhappy, out of pocket. Napoleon became morose 
and unsocial. If he seemed gay, the merriment struck his 
friends as forced and hollow. At the theatre, while the 
audience might be convulsed with laughter. Napoleon was 
solemn and silent. If he was with a party of friends, their 
chatter seemed to fret him, and he would steal away, to be 
seen later sitting alone in some box of an upper tier, and 
"looking rather sulky." 

Pacing the streets from day to day, gloomy, empty of 
pocket, his career seemingly closed, his thoughts were 
bitter. He envied and hated the young men who dashed 
by him on their fine horses, and he railed out at them and 
at fate. He envied his brother Joseph, who had married 
the daughter of a man who had got rich in the business of 
soap-making and soap-selling. " Ah, that lucky rogue, 
Joseph ! " But might not Napoleon marry Desiree, the 
other daughter of the soap man? It would appear that 
he wished it, and that she was not unwilling, but the 
soap-boiler objected. " One Bonaparte in the family is 
enough." 



98 NAPOLEON chap. 

Napoleon traced his misfortunes back to the date of his 
arrest : " Salicetti has cast a cloud over the bright dawn 
of my youth. He has blighted my hopes of glory." At 
another time he said mournfully, striking his forehead, 
"Yet I am only twenty-six." Ruined by a fellow-Corsi- 
can ! Yet to all outward appearance Salicetti and Napo- 
leon continued to be good friends. They met at Madame 
Permon's from time to time, and Salicetti was often in 
Napoleon's room. Bourrienne states that the two men 
had much to say to each other in secret. It was as though 
they were concerned in some conspiracy. 

On May 20, 1795 (1st of Prairial), there was a riot, 
formidable and ferocious, directed by the extreme demo- 
crats against the Convention and its moderates. The 
Tuileries was forced by the mob, and a deputy killed. 
Intending to kill Freron, the crowd slew Ferraud. The 
head of the deputy was cut off, stuck on a pike, and 
pushed into the face of Boissy d'Anglas, the president. 
Gravely the president took off his hat and bowed to the 
dead. The Convention troops arrived, cleared the hall, 
and put down the riot. 

Napoleon was a witness to this frightful scene. After 
it was over, he dropped in at Madame Permon's to get 
something to eat. , The restaurants were all closed, and 
he had tasted nothing since morning. While eating, he 
related what had happened at the Tuileries, Suddenly 
he inquired, " Have you seen Salicetti ? " He then went 
on to complain of the injury Salicetti had done him. 
"But I bear him no ill-will." Salicetti was implicated 
in the revolt, and the conspiracy which preceded it may 
have been the subject of those private conversations he 
had been having at Napoleon's room — conversations 



nil 13th of VENDi:MIAlRE 99 

wliicli, according to Bourrienne, left Napoleon "pensive 
melancholy, and anxious." 

The conspiracy had ripened, had burst into riot, and 
the riot had been crushed. " Have you seen Salicetti ? " 
A very pertinent inquiry was this, for Salicetti was being 
hunted, and in a few days would be proscribed. If 
caught, he would probably be executed. Madame Junot 
says that while Napoleon spoke of Salicetti he " appeared 
very abstracted." Briefly to conclude this curious episode, 
Salicetti was proscribed, fled for refuge to Madame Per- 
mon's house, was hidden by her, and was finally smuggled 
out of Paris disguised as her valet. Napoleon had known 
where Salicetti lay concealed, but did not betray him. 
Was his conduct dictated by prudence or by generosity ? 
There was something generous in it, no doubt; but the 
conclusion is almost unavoidable that there was policy, 
too. If driven to the wall, Salicetti could have dis- 
closed matters hurtful to Napoleon. Those private in- 
terviews, secret conferences, daily visits to Napoleon's 
room on the days the conspiracy was being formed — 
would they not look bad for a young officer who was 
known to have a grievance, and who had been heard 
frequently and publicly to denounce the government? 
This may have been what was on Napoleon's mind while 
he was so much buried in thought at Madame Permon's. 

It was fine proof of Napoleon's judgment that he did 
not allow himself to be drawn into the conspiracy. An- 
gered against the government, despising many of the men 
who composed it, restlessly ambitious, and intensely yearn- 
ing for action, the wonder is that he came within the 
secrets of the leaders of the revolt and yet kept his skirts 
clear. 



100 NAPOLEON chap. 

Napoleon at this period was sallow and thin ; his chest- 
nut hair hung long and badly powdered. His speech was 
generally terse and abrupt. He had not yet developed 
grace of speech and manner. When he came to present 
Madame Permon a bunch of violets, he did it awkwardly 
— so much so that his ungainly manner provoked smiles. 
His dress was plain. A gray overcoat buttoned to the 
chin ; a round hat pulled over his eyes, or stuck on the 
back of his head ; no gloves, and a black cravat, badly tied ; 
boots coarse, and generally unclean. When the weather 
was bad, these boots would be muddy and wet, and Napo- 
leon would put them on the fender to dry, to the irritation 
of those who had exacting noses. Madame Permon's 
being a nose of that class, her handkerchief rose to her 
nose whenever the Bonaparte boots rose to the fender. 
Napoleon, an observant man, took the hint, and got into 
the habit of stopping in the area for the chambermaid to 
clean his boots with her broom. His clothes had become 
threadbare, his hat dilapidated. The bootmaker who 
gave him credit in this dark hour was never forgotten. 
The Emperor Napoleon persisted in patronizing the clumsy 
cobbler whose heart had not hardened itself against the 
forlorn brigadier. 

One night at St. Helena, when Napoleon, unable to 
sleep, was trying to rob time of its tedium by recalling 
the vicissitudes of his past, he related this incident : " I 
was at this period, on one occasion, suffering from that 
extreme depression of spirits which renders life a burden 
too great to be borne. I had just received a letter from 
my mother, revealing to me the utter destitution into 
which she was plunged. My own salary had been cut 
off, and I had but five francs in my pocket. I wandered 



vm 13th of VKNDI:mIAIRE 101 

along the banks of the river, tempted to commit suicide. 
In a few moments I should have thrown myself into the 
water, when I ran against a man dressed like a mechanic. 
' Is that you. Napoleon ? ' and he threw himself upon my 
neck. It was my old friend, Des Mazis, who had emi- 
grated, and who had now returned in disguise to visit his 
mother. ' But what is the matter. Napoleon ? You do 
not listen to me ! You do not seem to hear me ! ' 

" I confessed everything to him. 

"'Is that all ? ' said he, and unbuttoning his coarse waist- 
coat and taking off a belt which he handed me, ' Here are 
30,000 francs which I can spare ; take them and relieve 
your mother.' " 

Napoleon told how he was so overjoyed that he rushed 
away to send the money to his mother, without having 
waited to thank his friend. Ashamed of his conduct, he 
soon went back to seek Des Mazis, but failed to find him: 
anywhere. It was under the Empire that the two again 
met. Napoleon forced ten times the amount of the loan 
upon Des Mazis, and appointed him to a position which 
paid him 30,000 francs per year. 

Low as he was in purse and spirit, Napoleon was too 
young, too strong, too self-reliant to yield to despair for 
any length of time. His active brain teemed with 
schemes for the future. His airy fancy soared all the 
way from plans which involved a book store, and a leasing 
and sub-letting of apartment houses, to service in Turkey 
and an empire in the East. Sometimes his friends thought 
him almost crazy. Going with Bourrienne, who was look- 
ing about for a suitable house, Napoleon took a fancy to 
the house opposite, and thought of hiring it for himself, 
Uncle Fesch, and his old Brienne teacher, Patrault : 



102 NAPOLEON char 

"With that house, my friends in it, and a horse and 
cabriolet, I should be the happiest fellow in the world." 

Junot relates that one evening when the two were walk- 
ing in Jardin des Plantes, Napoleon appeared to be over- 
come by the beauties of his surroundings and the charms 
of the night. He made Junot his confidant — he was in 
love, and his affection was not returned. Junot listened, 
sympathized, condoled, and then made Napoleon Ms con- 
fidant. Junot was also in love — he loved Pauline 
Bonaparte, and wished to wed her. At once Napoleon 
recovered himself. Firmly he rejected the proposition: 
Junot had no fortune, Pauline had none — marriage was 
out of the question. 

" You must wait. We shall see better days, my friend. 
— Yes ! We shall have them even should I go to seek 
them in another quarter of the world ! " 
' But where should he go ? This question he put to 
himself and to the few friends who felt interest in his 
fate. One of his former teachers at Brienne, D'Harved, 
met him at this time in Paris, and was struck by his 
dejected appearance. " Chagrin and discontent were 
vividly painted on his face. He broke out into abuse of 
the government." D'Harved was afraid that such talk 
would endanger listener as well as speaker, and at his in- 
stance they retired into the garden of the Palais Royal, 
accompanied by an Englishman named Blinkam or Blen- 
cowe. Napoleon continued to complain of the manner in 
which the authorities had treated him, and he declared 
his purpose of leaving the country. The Englishman pro- 
posed that they enter a restaurant. There the conversa- 
tion was resumed. Napoleon did not favor D'Harved's 
suggestion, that he offer his services to England. Nor did 



Tin 13th of VEND:feMIAIRE 108 

Germany attract him. Spain might do, for " there is not 
a single warrior in that country." 

Then the Englishman proposed Turkey, promising to 
write letters which would favorably dispose certain in- 
fluential persons in Constantinople to the luckless adven- 
turer. Napoleon jumped at the idea. " His countenance 
beamed with delight and hope." He exclaimed, "I 
shall at once solicit permission to depart to Constanti- 
nople." And he did so. 

At the end of July, Aubrey went out of office, and was 
succeeded in the war committee by Doulcet de Ponte- 
coulant. One of the first matters which engaged his at- 
tention was the condition of the army of Italy. It had 
been losing ground. Doulcet needed the advice of some 
one who was familiar with the situation there ; and 
Boissy d'Anglas recommended Napoleon. Summoned to 
the war office. Napoleon answered all questions promptly, 
and made suggestions as to what ought to be done, 
which so dazzled the minister that he said to Napoleon, 
" General, take time and write out what you propose, 
so that it may be laid before the Committee." 

" Time! " cried Napoleon, "give me a couple of sheets 
of paper and a pen. In half an hour I will have the 
plan of campaign ready." He sat down and wrote, but 
who could read that awful writing ? Taking it home 
with him, he made Junot copy it, and the plan was sub- 
mitted to the full committee, which sent it on to the army. 
Doulcet, favorably impressed by Napoleon, retained him 
in the topographical bureau, where he and three others 
drew up plans and directions for all the armies. 

On the 16th of August the order was issued peremp- 
torily, that Napoleon should proceed to the post assigned 



104 NAPOLEON chap. 

him in the army of the West. He did not obey, and 
powerful friends screened him. On August 30 he applied 
to be sent to Turkey to increase the military resources of 
the Sultan. On September 15 or 25 (for authorities 
differ painfully on the date), a report signed by Camba- 
ceres and others decreed that his name be stricken from 
the list of generals in active service. 

One reason given for the sudden harshness of the Com- 
mittee in striking his name off the list is that he had 
pressed for payment of fraudulent accounts. He had 
claimed and received mileage from Nice to Paris, when he 
had come from Marseilles only. He had also claimed pay 
for horses sold by him according to ■ orders, when he set 
forth on the Corsican expedition. The authorities had no 
faith in these horses, considered them purely imaginary ; 
and, in consequence. Napoleon was spoken of very harshly 
by government officials. Letourneur, who had succeeded 
Doulcet on the Committee, was one of those who disliked 
and opposed him. 

On September 15 a subcommittee reported to the full 
committee in favor of the proposition, that Napoleon be 
sent, with officers of his suite, to reorganize the military 
system of the Turks. Only in government by committee 
could such a contradictory series of orders and resolutions 
be possible. Napoleon had seriously canvassed the officers 
who were to compose his suite on the mission to Turkey, 
when symptoms of another revolutionary convulsion at- 
tracted his notice and halted his preparations. 

The Convention, which had reeled and rocked along for 
three years, was now about to adjourn. It felt that it 
must, and yet it did not wish to do so. They therefore 
decreed that two-thirds of the next legislature should be 



y„i 13th of VENDEMIAIEE 105 

composed of themselves. The other third, the people 
might elect. One reason for this strange law was that 
the royalist reaction had become extremely threatening. 
The Count of Artois was said to be hovering on the coast, 
ready to land an expedition from England, and to march 
on Paris. The army of Conde was expecting to cooperate 
from the Rhine. Paris was to give the signal by a revolt 
which should upset the Convention. 

Besides the royalists, there were other formidable mal- 
contents. There were the poorer classes, who had been 
deprived of their votes by the property qualification of 
the new constitution. In the revolt which ensued, how- 
ever, the royalists were the soul of the movement. The 
extreme democrats, though hotly opposed to the property 
qualification, hated royalism worse. Santerre was ready 
to sustain the Convention, and did so. The very prisoners 
who had been lying in chains since the democratic revolt 
of May (1st of Prairial) were now willing to fight for the 
Convention, and did fight for it. 

The centre of the insurrection against the Convention, 
its new constitution, and its decrees was the Section 
Lepelletier, the home of the rich men of the middle class. 
The National Guards from this section, it will be remem- 
bered, had fought in defence of the King on the famous 
10th of August. It was now ready to fight for royalty 
again. 

On the 4th of October (12th of Vendemiaire) the Section 
Lepelletier declared itself in insurrection, and it became 
the rallying-point for insurgents from all the sections of 
Paris. The National Guard, forty thousand strong, had 
been so reorganized that it was now with the insurgents. 
To the royalists the situation seemed full of promise, for 



106 NAPOLEON chap. 

the Convention had but seven or eight thousand troops 
upon which it could rely. General Dumas was selected 
by the Convention to take command of its forces, but he 
had left town three days before. 

General Menou, in command of the Convention forces, 
was ordered to go and disarm and disperse the insurgents. 
For some reason, either because he failed to realize the 
gravity of the crisis, or because he was unnerved by it, he 
did the worst thing possible. He parleyed, and compro- 
mised. He agreed to withdraw his troops on the promise 
of the insurgents to withdraw theirs. He then retreated, 
and the insurgents held their ground and their arms, 
loudly proclaiming their triumph. 

As the nerveless and witless Menou was drawing off 
Ms men, a young officer, on the steps of the Feydau 
' i'heatre, exclaimed to his companion, " Where can that 
tellow be going ? " It was Napoleon speaking to Junot. 
And he continued : " Ah, if the sections would only let 
me lead them, I would guarantee to place them in the 
Tuileries in two hours, and have all those Convention ras- 
cals driven out ! " Then he hurried to the Tuileries to see 
what the Convention would do next. 

It was evident that on the morrow the insurgents would 
attack. They proclaimed their intention of doing so, and 
they were confident of success. 

The Convention removed Menou from command, and 
placed him under arrest. They then chose Barras com- 
mander-in-chief, remembering his vigor and success in 
July, 1794, when Robespierre fell. Napoleon was made 
second in command. 

Just how this appointment came to be made, will always 
be a matter of dispute. It is certain that Barras suggested 



vni 13th of VENDlfeMIAIRE 107 

Bonaparte's name to the Committee in the words : " I have 
precisely the man we want. It is a little Corsican officer, 
who will not stand on ceremony." Baron Fain states 
that Napoleon was at this time in the topographical office, 
that he was sent for, and sworn in by the Committee in the 
committee-room. Napoleon himself, in one of his differ- 
ent versions, relates that he was at the Feydau Theatre, 
was told what was happening at the Lepelletier section, 
left the theatre, witnessed Menou's retreat, and then hur- 
ried to the Convention to see how the news would be re- 
ceived. Arrived at the Tuileries, he mixed with the crowd 
in the galleries, and heard his name called. Announce- 
ment was made that he had been appointed as aide to 
Barras. 

Barras, in his turn, says that on this fateful evening 
Bonaparte could not be found at any of his usual haunts, 
that he came to the Tuileries late, looking confused, and 
that in answer to sharp questions he admitted that he had 
come from the section Lepelletier, where he had been re- 
connoitring the enemy. Barras charges that he had been 
dickering with the other side. 

By whatever means it came about. Napoleon Bonaparte 
was acting chief in the famous 13th of Vendemiaire (5th 
of October, 1795). It was he whose genius converted the 
Tuileries, which the Parisian mobs had time and again 
stormed, into a fortress an army could not have taken. 
Cannon were at Sablons, cannon he must have, and 
Murat at the head of three hundred horse went in a 
gallop to bring the guns. In the nick of time the order 
was given, for the insurgents had sent also. Murat's 
mounted men reached Sablons in advance of the un- 
mounted insurgents, and the cannon were whirled away 



108 NAPOLEON chap. 

to the Tuileries. Planted so as to command all avenues 
of approach, they made the position invulnerable, for the 
insurgents had no cannon. 

General Thiebault says: "From the first, his activity 
was astonishing : he seemed to be everywhere at once, or 
rather he only vanished at one point to reappear instantly. 
He surprised people further by his' laconic, clear, and 
prompt orders, imperative to the last degree. Everybody 
was struck also by the vigor of his arrangements, and 
passed from admiration to confidence, and from confidence 
to enthusiasm." 

Morning came, and with it the insurgents ; but at sight 
of the formidable defences which had been the work of 
the night, they halted. Hour after hour passed away in 
hoots, yells, threats, negotiation. Toward evening it 
seemed that the Convention troops might be brought to 
fraternize with the insurgents. Suddenly a musket was 
fired, and the battle opened ; or rat her the cannonade 
commenced, for battle it could not be called. The insur- 
gents showed courage, but had no cha noo of - s uccess what- 
ever. It was cannon against muskets, an army intrenched 
against a packed mob in the streets. The firing com- 
menced at about four in the evening. By six all was over. 

A few attempts to rally the insurgents were made, but 
were easily frustrated. The Convention forces carried out 
the orders Menou had received by disarming the turbu- 
lent sections. A few of the ringleaders of the revolt were 
tried and punished, but only one, Lafond, was executed. 

During this disarmament, which recent writers say 
never happened, but which Menou had been officially 
instructed to effect, and which both Napoleon and Barras 
say they did effect, the victorious conventionals made one 



Tin 13th of VENDlfeMIAIKE 109 

of those mistakes incident to the prevailing darkness and 
confusion. The house of Madame de Beauharnais was 
entered, the sword of her late husband, the Viscount 
Beauharnais, was carried off. In a day or so the son of 
the widow Beauharnais went to Napoleon and asked for 
the return of his dead father's sword. His request im- 
mediately granted, and the sacred relic being placed in his 
hands, the boy covered the handle of the weapon with 
kisses, and burst in tears. Napoleon's interest was deeply 
aroused, and he treated the lad with that winning kind- 
ness which fascinated all who came within its influence. 
Such report did Eugene Beauharnais carry home that his 
mother felt bound to call upon the General, and thank him 
in person ; and it was thus, perhaps, that these two first 
met. 

Later biographers scout this story as a romance fash- 
ioned by Napoleon himself, and they say that (1) no 
disarmament took place ; and (2) that if such disarma- 
ment did take place, Madame Beauharnais, a friend of 
Barras, would not have been molested. To say nothing 
of further proof, the contemporaneous letter of Napoleon 
to Joseph shows that the sections were disarmed ; and as 
to Madame Beauharnais being screened by her friendly 
relations with Barras, that presupposes every soldier in 
the Convention army to have known all about Barras's 
private affairs. How could the thousands of Convention 
troops, fifteen hundred of whom were democrats just out 
of jail, know who was or was not a personal friend of 
Barras ? The Convention was in the minority ; it had less 
than eight thousand troops : would it have left arms in 
the hands of the majority and the forty thousand National 
Guards ? > 



110 NAPOLEON CHAP. 

Captious critics call attention to the fact that Napoleon 
elsewhere stated that he met his future wife at the house 
of Barras. This assertion does not necessarily conflict 
with the other. A call at the office of an official does not 
constitute a social meeting. When Napoleon said he met 
Madame Beauharnais at the house of Barras, his meaning 
probably was that he there first knew her socially. And 
why should a man like Napoleon, who could lie so superbly 
when he tried, invent so bungling a hoax as one which 
involved a disarmament of Paris which did not take place, 
and the return of a sword which had never been seized ? 

General Thiebault says : " A few days after the 13 of Ven- 
demiaire I happened to be at the office of the general staff 
when General Bonaparte came in. I can still see his little 
hat surmounted by a chance plume badly fastened on, his 
tricolor sash more than carelessly tied, his coat cut any- 
how, and a sword which did not seem the kind of weapon 
to make his fortune. Flinging his hat on a large table in 
the middle of the room, he went up to an old general, 
named Krieg, a man of wonderful knowledge of military 
detail and author of a soldier's manual. He made him 
take a seat beside him at the table, and began questioning 
him, pen in hand, about .a host of facts connected with the 
service and discipline. Some of his questions showed such 
complete ignorance of some of the most ordinary things 
that several of my comrades smiled. I was myself struck 
by the number of his questions, their order, and their 
rapidity, no less than by the way in which the answers 
were caught up, and often found to resolve themselves into 
new questions, which he deduced as consequences from 
them. But what struck me still more was the sight of a 
commander-in-chief perfectly indifferent about showing 



Tin 13th of VEND^MIAIRE 111 

his subordinates how .completely ignorant he was of vari- 
ous points of. the business which the junior of them was 
supposed to know perfectly, and this raised him a hundred 
cubits in my eyes." 

Here we see Napoleon drawn to the life. Instead of 
sitting down to gloat over his recent brilliant success, he 
had gone to work with the devouring zeal of a man who 
had done just enough to encourage him to do more. He 
did not idle away any time listening to congratulations. 
His cannon having opened one door in his advance, his 
eager eyes were already fixed far ahead on another, and 
his restless feet were in the path. In his garrison days he 
had not loved the details of his profession. Dull routine 
had been hateful, keeping him away from his books and 
his solitary musings. Now it was different. He saw the 
need of mastering everything which related to war, and, 
before he had even arrayed himself in new uniform, he 
had sought the old officer, Krieg, and was exhausting 
that source of information. In such direct, honest, 
practical way he came by that knowledge of war which 
justified him in saying in later years : " I know my pro- 
fession thoroughly. Everything which enters into war 
I can do. If there is no powder, I can make it. If there 
are no cannon, I will cast them." He knew better how to 
construct a road or a bridge than any engineer in the 
army. He had the best eye for ground, could best esti- 
mate distances, could best tell what men could do on the 
march or in the field. Down to the pettiest details, he 
studied it all. " Do you know how the shirts which come 
in from the wash should be placed in the drawer? No? 
Then I will tell you. Put them always at the bottom of 
the drawer, else the same shirts will be constantly in use." 



112 NAPOLEON chai" 

This advice he volunteered to the astonished matron who 
had charge of the soldiers' linen at the Invalides. 

On October 12, 1795, Napoleon was restored to his 
grade in the artillery, and was named second comman- 
dant in the Army of the Interior. Ten days later, Barras 
having resigned his generalship, Napoleon became general 
of division and commander-in-chief of the Army of the 
Interior. 

On October 26, 1795, the Convention finally adjourned ; 
and on the next day it began to govern the country again 
with its two-thirds of the new legislatures (councils of 
Ancients and of Five Hundred) and its five regicide 
directors, — Barras, Carnot, Rewbell, Letourneur, and 
Larevelliere-Lepaux. 

Napoleon had become one of the dominant men of the 
State. In his every movement was the sense of his power. 
His position good, he lost no time in making it better. 
He took up suitable quarters in the Rue des Oapuehines, 
surrounded himself with a brilliant staff, donned a hand- 
some uniform, sported carriages and fine horses, and 
appeared in society. 

He did not narrow himself to any clique or faction, but 
sought friends in all parties. He protected and conciliated 
royalists, called back to the service officers who had been 
retired, found good places for his friends, sent bread and 
wood to famishing families in the districts of the poor. 
At the same time he held down lawless outbreaks with a 
hand of iron, and went in person to close the great club 
of the Pantheon, the hot-bed of political agitation. He 
thoroughly reorganized the Army of the Interior and 
the National Guard, formed guards for the legislative 
councils and for the Directory, acting almost always on 



VIII 13th of VEND:fcMIAIRB 113 

his own responsibility, and consulting his superiors but 
little. 

Uncle Fesch came to town to be nominally Napoleon's 
secretary. Joseph received money and the promise of a 
consulship. : Lucien was reinstalled in the fruitful com- 
missary. Louis was once more lieutenant, and Jerome 
was placed in school in Paris. Of course Madame Letitia 
and the sisters basked in the sunshine also ; for Napoleon 
could never do too much for his family. Nor did he 
overlook the Permons. According to Madame Junot, he 
had always liked them in the days of his poverty. Now 
that prosperity had come, he loved them better than 
ever : so much so indeed that he proposed that the Bona- 
partes should matrimonially absorb the entire Permon 
family. Jerome was to be married to Laura Permon, 
Pauline to Albert Permon, and Napoleon, himself, was 
to wed the widow Permon. According to Laura (after- 
ward Madame Junot), this proposition was formally made 
by Napoleon, and laughed out of court by Madame Permon. 
The baffled matchmaker continued his visits, however, and 
frequently came to the house, accompanied by members 
of his staff. 

One day as he stepped from his carriage, a poor woman 
held out toward him a dead child in her arms — the 
youngest of her six children. It had died of starvation, 
and the others would die if she could not get help. 
Napoleon was deeply moved, gave the woman kind words 
and money, and followed the matter up by getting her 
pensioned. 

There was widespread squalor and misery in Paris 
during the winter of 1795, and Napoleon showed tact as 
well as kindness and firmness in preventing tumult. 



114 NAPOLEON cUt. tiii 






Consider that little picture which is usually passed over 
so lightly : an angry mob of the unemployed, hungry, 
desperate, threatening, and on the brink of violence. 
They suffer, their wives starve, their children die in the 
garrets. Of course they blame the government. How 
could such misery exist where there was so much wealth 
and food, if the government was treating all fairly ? 
Furious women stir about in the crowd lashing the upper 
classes with bitter tongues, and goading the men on to 
the point of rioting. Napoleon and his escort arrive. 
One fat fisherwoman bustles and bawls : " Don't mind 
these dandies in uniform with epaulettes on their shoul- 
ders ! Don't disperse ! They care not if the poor people 
starve, if they can but eat well and gre ,7 fat." 

Think of Napoleon, the leanest of ai lean men, "the 
thinnest and oddest object I ever laid eyes on," sitting 
there on his horse representing the uiiprpular "they" ! 
" Madame, pray look at me : tell us which of us two is the 
fatter." The paunchy fisherwoman was stunned; the 
crowd laughed, and fell to pieces. 



CHAPTER IX 

rpHE young Republic found itself beset by the old gov- 
ernments of Europe. Because the Revolution pro- 
claimed a new gospel, because it asserted the divine right 
of the people to govern themselves, because it made war 
upon caste and privilege, because it asserted the equal 
right of every citizen to take his share in the benefits as 
well as the burdens of society, because it threatened the 
tyranny of both Church and State, it was hated with 
intense bitterness by the kings, the high-priests, and the 
aristocracy of Europe. 

In 1793 the first great league was formed to crush it, 
and to restore the Old Order in France. The strong 
member of this combination against human progress was 
Great Britain. Rendered secure from attack by her 
ocean girdle and her invincible fleets, she nevertheless 
dreaded what were called "French principles." In these 
principles she saw everything to dread ; for they were 
most insidious, and few were the men of the masses who, 
having learned what the new doctrine was, did not em- 
brace it. 

The common man, the average man, the full-grown man, 
the man who had not been stunted by the Orthodox peda- 
gogue or priest, could not listen to the creed of the French 
republicans without feeling in his heart of hearts that it 

!16 



116 NAPOLEON chap. 

offered to tlie world an escape from the system which 
then enslaved it. Into Great Britain, in Germany, in Italy, 
in the Netherlands, in Russia itself, the shock with which 
the Old Order had fallen in France sent its vibrations — 
tremors which made the kings, princes, and privileged 
who dwelt in the upper stories of the social fabric quake 
with terror for the safety of the entire building. 

The controlling man in England was William Pitt, able, 
proud, cold, ambitious. Personally honest, his policy 
sounded the deepest depravities of statecraft. Under 
his administration India was looted, ravaged, enslaved ; 
Ireland coerced and dragooned ; France outlawed because 
she dared to kill a king and call into life a republic ; 
Europe bribed to a generation of war ; freedom of thought, 
and speech, and conduct denied, and the cause of feudalism 
given a new lease of life. The aims and ends of this 
man's statesmanship were eternally bad ; his methods 
would have warmed the heart of a Jesuit. He would not 
stoop to base deeds himself, would not speak the deliber- 
ateljv false word, would not convey the bribe, would not 
manufacture counterfeit money, would not arm the assas- 
sin, would not burn cities nor massacre innocent women 
and children. No, no ! — he belonged to what Lord 
Wolseley complacently calls "the highest type of Eng- 
lish gentleman," and his lofty soul would not permit 
him to do things like these himself. He would not cor- 
rupt Irish politicians to vote for the Union ; but he would 
supply Castlereagh with the money from which the bribes 
were paid. He would not himself debauch editor or pam- 
phleteer to slander a political foe, and deceive the British 
nation ; but he supplied funds to those who did. Nor 
would he have put daggers into the hands of fanatics that 



IX THE YOUNG EEPUBLIC 117 

they might do murder ; but he protected and aided in Eng- 
land those who did. Not a political criminal himself, he 
used criminals and garnered the harvest of their crimes. 
Not himself capable of political theft, he countenanced the 
political thief, approved his success, and as a receiver of 
stolen goods, knowing them to have been stolen, haughtily 
added huge gains to his political wealth. 

The same lofty-minded minister who had debauched 
Ireland — an enemy to Irish independence — made war 
upon free speech and political liberty in England, and 
exhausted the resources of diplomacy and force to stamp 
out the revolutionary movement of France. Under his 
sanction, his emissaries attacked the French Republic by 
forging and counterfeiting her paper currency ; by arm- 
ing her factions the one against the other ; by corrupting 
her trusted leaders ; by nerving the hand of the assassin 
when the corruptionist could not prevail. That London 
harbored the Bourbon and his paid assassin was due to 
the influence of William Pitt. That the Bourbon could 
land on the French coast the emissaries who came to 
rouse Vendeans to revolt, or to murder Bonaparte in 
Paris, was due to the position of William Pitt. 

To the same eminent statesman was due the fact that 
for a whole generation British newspapers were so filled 
with falsehoods against France and Napoleon that an 
Englishman could not know the truth without leaving 
his country to hear it. To the same cause was due the 
league after league of Europe against France, which, 
beginning in 1793, reunited and renewed the struggle as 
often as opportunity offered until France was crushed, 
and the hands upon the clock of human progress put 
back a hundred years. 



118 NAPOLEON chap. 

Without England, the coalitions against republican 
France would have had trifling results. It was England 
which furnished inexhaustible supplies of money; Eng' 
land which scoured the ocean with her fleets and main- 
tained the blockade. 

There had been a time when the French Revolution 
was not unpopular in Great Britain. This was when 
the reform movement was under the control of leaders 
who proclaimed their purpose to be to model the mon- 
archy in France upon that of England. So long as pro- 
fessions of this sort were made, there was nothing to 
awaken distrust in staid, conservative England. Even 
aristocracy loves a fettered king. But when more radi- 
cal men wrested leadership from the constitutionals, and 
boldly declared that the work of reform must strike 
deeper, must destroy feudalism root and branch, must 
consign a corpulent Church to the poverty whose beau- 
ties it preached, the lords and the bishops of Great 
Britain realized that the time had come when they must 
legislate, preach, pray, and fight against inovations which, 
if successful in France, would inevitably cross the narrow 
Channel. 

All the machinery of repression was put to work. 
Books were written against the Revolution, and paid for 
by pensions drawn from the common treasury. Sermons 
were preached against the Revolution, and paid for in 
salaries drawn from the State funds. Parliament was 
set in motion to enact rigorously oppressive laws, and 
courts were set in motion to enforce the statutes. The 
political system in England might be ever so bad, but the 
people should not discuss it. Public meetings became 
criminal ; public reading rooms, unlicensed, were criminal. 



IX THE YOTTNCt KEPTTRLTC 119 

By the plain letter of the law of Christian England, if 
any citizen opened his house or room "for the purpose 
of reading books, or pamphlets, or newspapers," such citi- 
zen became a criminal and such house "a disorderly 
house." Before the citizen could permit others to use 
his books for pay, he must secure the approval and the 
license of bigoted Tory officials. No public meeting at 
all could be held unless a notice of such meeting signed 
by a householder, and stating the object of the meeting, 
should be inserted in a newspaper at least five days pre- 
vious to the meeting. And even then the Tory justice of 
the peace was empowered to break up the meeting and 
imprison the persons attending it, if he thought the 
language held by the speaker of the meeting was calcu- 
lated to bring the King or the government into contempt. 
Not even in the open fields could an}'^ lecture, speech, or 
debate be had without a license from a Tory official. 

The government spy, the paid informer, went abroad, 
searching, listening, reporting, persecuting, and prose- 
cuting. No privacy was sacred, no individual rights 
were respected, terrorism became a system. Paine's 
Rights of Man threw the upper classes into convul- 
sions ; his Common Sense became a hideous nightmare. 
Men were arrested like felons, tried like felons, punished 
like felons for reading pamphlets and books which are now 
such commonplace exponents of democracy that they are 
well-nigh forgotten. It was a time of misrule, of class leg- 
islation, of misery among the masses. It was a time when 
the laborer had almost no rights, almost no opportunities, 
almost no inducement to live, beyond the animal instinct 
which preserves the brute. It was a time when the land- 
lord was almost absolute master of land and man ; when 



120 NAPOLEON chap. 

the nobleman controlled the King, the House of Lords, 
and the House of Commons. It was a time when a duke 
might send half a dozen of his retainers to take seats in 
Parliament, or when he might advertise the seats for sale 
and knock them down to the highest bidder. It was a 
time when a close corporation of hereditary aristocrats 
controlled England like a private estate, taxed her people, 
dictated her laws, ruled her domestic and foreign policies, 
and made war or peace according to their own good pleas- 
ure. It was a time when it might have been said of most 
English towns as the town-crier reported to his Tory 
masters in reference to the village of Bolton — that he 
had diligently searched the place and . had found in it 
neither The Rights of Man nor Common Sense. 

There was one class which shared with the nobles the 
control of English national policies, and this was that of 
the great merchants and manufacturers. The exporter. 
The Prince of Trade, was a power behind the throne, and 
in foreign affairs his selfish greed dominated England's 
policy. 

This governing class, as Napoleon said, looked upon the 
public, the people, as a milch cow ; the only interest 
which they had in the cow was that it should not go dry. 
Offices, dignities, salaries, were handed down from sire to 
son. By hereditary right the government, its purse and 
its sword, belonged to these noble creatures whose merit 
frequently consisted solely in being the sons of their sires. 
To fill the ships which fought for the supremacy of this 
oligarchy, press-gangs prowled about the streets on the 
hunt for victims. Poor men, common laborers, and people 
of the lowlier sort were pounced upon by these press 
gangs, and forcibly carried off to that " hell on earth," a 



IX THE YOUNG EEPUBLIC 121 

British man-of-war of a century ago. One instance is 
recorded of a groom coming from the church where he 
had just been married, and who was snatched from the 
arms of his frantic bride and borne off — to return after 
many years to seek for a wife long since dead, in a neigh- 
borhood where he had long been forgotten. 

In the army and in the fleet soldiers and sailors were 
lashed like dogs to keep them under ; and it was no un- 
common thing for the victims to die from the effects of 
the brutal beating. 

Considering all these things, the reader will understand 
why England made such determined war upon republican 
France. Against that country she launched armies and 
fleets, bribed kings and ministers, subsidized coalitions, 
straining every nerve year in and year out to put the 
Bourbons back on the throne, and to stay the advance 
of democracy. She temporarily succeeded. Her selfish 
King, nobles, and clericals held their grip, and postponed 
the day of reform. But the delay was dearly bought. 
The statesmanship of Pitt, Canning, Castlereagh, and 
Burke strewed Europe with dead men, and loaded nations 
with appalling debts. Upon land and sea, in almost 
every clime, men of almost every race were armed, en- 
raged, and set to killing each other in order that the same 
few might continue to milk the cow. 

In forming an opinion about Napoleon, it must be re- 
membered that when he first came upon the scene he 
found these conditions already in existence, — Europe in 
league against republican France. With the creation of 
those conditions he had had nothing to do. Not his was 
the beginning of the Revolution ; not his the execution 
of Louis XVI. ; not his the quarrel with England. If 



122 • NAPOLEON chap, ix 

Great Britain and her allies afterward concentrated all 
their abuse, hatred, and hostility upon him, it was because 
he had become France ; he had become, as Pitt himself 
said, " the child and champion of democracy " ; he had 
become as Toryism throughout the world said, the "em- 
bodiment of the French Revolution." 

This is the great basic truth of Napoleon's relations 
with Europe ; and if we overlook it, we utterly fail to un- 
derstand his career. In an evil hour for France, as well as 
for him, the allied kings succeeded in making the French 
forget her past. It was not till the Bourbons had returned 
to France, to Spain, to Italy; it was not till feudalism 
had returned to Germany with its privilege, its abuses, its 
stick for the soldier, its rack and wheel for the civilian ; 
it was not till Metternich and his Holy Alliance had 
smashed with iron heel every struggle for popular rights 
on the Continent; it was not till Napoleon, dead at St. 
Helena, was remembered in vivid contrast to the soulless 
despots who succeeded him, that liberalism, not only in 
France, but throughout the world, realized how exceeding 
great had been the folly of the French when they allowed 
the kings to divorce the cause of Napoleon from that of 
the French people. 



CHAPTER X 

rpHE French Revolution was no longer guided by the 
men of ideals. With the downfall of Robespierre had 
come the triumph of those who bothered themselves with 
no dreams of social regeneration, but whose energies were 
directed with an eye single to their own advantage. Here 
and there was left a relic of the better type of revolution- 
ist, " a rose of the garden left on its stalk to show where 
the garden had been " ; but to one Carnot there were 
dozens of the brood of Barras. 

The stern, single-minded, terribly resolute men of the 
Great Committee, who had worked fourteen hours a day 
in a plainly furnished room of the Tuileries, taking their 
lunch like common clerks as they stood about the table at 
which they wrote, — smiling perhaps, as they ate, at some 
jest of Barere, — with no thought of enriching themselves, 
intent only upon working out the problems of the Revolu- 
tion in order that France might find her way to a future 
of glory and happiness — these men were gone, to come no 
more. Fiercely attached to variant creeds, they had 
warred among themselves, destroying each other, weary- 
ing the world with violence, and giving the scoundrels the 
opportunity to cry " Peace ! " and to seize control. True, 
the work of the Revolution had been done too well to be 
wholly undone. Feudalism had been torn up root and 

123 



124 NAPOLEON chap. 

branch ; it could never be so flourishing again. Absolut- 
ism, royal and papal infallibility, had been trodden into 
the mire where they belonged ; they might be set in place 
again, but they would never more look quite so dazzling, 
nor be worshipped with quite such blindness of devotion. 
Great principles of civil and religious liberty had been 
planted ; they could never be wholly plucked out. The 
human race had for once seen a great people fill its lungs 
and its brain with the air and the inspiration of absolute 
freedom from priest, king, aristocrat, precedent, conven- 
tionality, and caste-made law ; the spectacle would never 
be forgotten, nor the example cease to blaze as a beacon, 
lighting the feet and kindling the hopes of the world. 

But, for the time, the triumph of the venal brought with 
it shame and disaster to the entire body politic. The 
public service corrupt, the moral tone of society sank. 
Ideals came into contempt, idealists into ridicule. The 
" man of the world," calling himself practical, and prid- 
ing himself on his ability to play to the baser passions 
of humanity, laughed revolutionary dogmas aside, put 
revolutionary simplicity and honesty out of fashion, made 
a jest of duty and patriotism, and prostituted public office 
into a private opportunity. 

Hordes of adventurers, male and female, stormed the 
administration, took it, and looted it. The professional 
money-getter controlled the Directory : the contractor, 
stock-jobber, fund-holder, peculator, and speculator. In 
all matters pertaining to finance, the Bourse was the 
government. The nobility of the Old Order had monop- 
olized the State's favors under the kings ; the rich men 
of the middle class, the Bourgeoisie, did so now. The 
giver and the taker of bribes met and smiled upon each 



X JOSEPHINE 126 

other ; the lobbyist hunted his prey and found it. Once 
again the woman, beautiful, shrewd, and unchaste, became 
greater than the libertine official who had surrendered 
to her charms ; and she awarded fat contracts, trafficked 
in pardons and appointments, and influenced the choice 
of army chiefs. 

The government no longer concerned itself with 
chimeras, dreams of better men and methods, visions of 
beneficent laws dealing impartially with an improving 
mass of citizenship. Just as the Grand Monarch's court 
had revelled in the fairyland of joy and light and plenty 
at Versailles while peasants in the provinces fed on grass 
and roots, dying like flies in noisome huts and garrets ; 
just as the Pompadour of Louis the XV. had squandered 
national treasures upon diamonds, palaces, endless festivi- 
ties, while the soldiers of France starved and shivered 
in Canada, losing an empire for want of ammunition to 
hold it ! so, under the Directory, Barras held court in 
splendor, while workmen died of want in the garrets of 
Paris ; and he feasted with his Madame Tallien or his 
Josephine Beauharnais, while the soldiers on the Rhine 
or on the Alps faced the winter in rags, and were forced 
to rob to keep from starvation. 

This wretched state of things had not reached its climax 
at the period I am treating, but the beginnings had been 
made, the germs were all present and active. 

In this revival of mock royalty, Barras outshone his 
peers. He was of most noble descent, his family " as old 
as the rocks of Provence "; his manners redolent of the 
Old Regime, and much more so his morals. His honesty, 
like his patriotism, delighted in large bribes ; and he 
never by any chance told the truth if a lie would do as 



126 NAPOLEON chap. 

well. His person was tall and commanding ; his voice, 
in a crisis, had sometimes rung out like a trumpet and 
rallied the wavering, for the man was brave and capable 
of energetic action. But he was a sensualist, base to the 
core, vulgar in mind and heart, true to no creed, and 
capable of no high, noble, strenuous role. Rotten him- 
self, he believed that other men were as degraded. As 
to women, they never stirred a thought in him which 
would not, if worded in the ears of a true woman, have 
mantled her cheek with shame. 

This was the man to whom Napoleon had attached him- 
self ; this was the man in whose house Josephine was 
living when Napoleon met her. Barras was the strong 
man of the hour ; Barras had places to give and favors to 
(divide ; Barras was the candle around which fluttered 
moths large and small ; and to this light had come the 
Adventurer from Corsica, and the adventuress from 
Martinique. Usually it is the candle which singes the 
moth ; in this case it was the moths which put out the 
oandle. 

Napoleon had become a thorough man of the world. 
Hard experience had driven away sentimental illusions. 
The visionary of the Corsican sea-lulled grotto, the patri 
otic dreamer of the Brienne garden-harbor, had died some 
time ago. The man who now commanded the Army of 
the Interior was different altogether. Reading, experi- 
ence, observation, the stern teachings of necessit}^, had 
taught him to believe that the Italian proverb was true, 
"One must not be too good, if one would succeed." He 
believed now that rigid principles were like a plank 
strapped across the breast : not troublesome when the 
path led through the open, but extremely detrimental to 



X JOSEPHINE 127 

speed in going through a wood. He had studied the 
lives of great men, — Alexander, Csesar, Richelieu, Fred- 
erick, Cromwell, — and the study had not tended to his 
elevation in matters of method. He had studied the 
politics of the world, the records of national aggrandize- 
ment, the inner secrets of government, and his concep- 
tions of public honor had not been made more lofty. He 
had come to believe that interest governed all men ; that 
no such things as disinterested patriotism, truth, honor, 
and virtue existed on earth. He believed that life was a 
fight, a scramble, an unscrupulous rush for place, power, 
riches ; and that the strongest, fleetest, most artful would 
win — especially if they would take all the short cuts. 
Idealogists he despised. 

Cold, calculating, disillusioned, he took the world as he 
found it. New men and women he could not create, nor 
could he create other conditions, moral, social, political, 
or material. He must recognize facts, must deal with 
actualities. If bad men alone could give him what he 
wanted, he must court the bad men. If bad men only 
could do the work he wanted done, he must use the bad 
men. Barras, Freron, Tallien, being in power, he would 
get all he could out of them, just as he had exhausted 
the friendship of Robespierre and Salicetti, and just as he 
afterward used Fouche and Talleyrand. 

Nor was he more scrupulous in his relations with 
women. He must have known the character of Madame 
Tallien, mistress and then wife of the man of July, and 
now mistress of Barras ; but nevertheless he sought her 
acquaintance, and cultivated her friendship. Knowing the 
character of Madame Tallien, he must have felt that her 
bosom friend, Madame Beauharnais, could not be wholly 



128 NAPOLEON chap. 

pure. He saw them together night and day, he witnessed 
their influence with Barras ; it is impossible that he did 
not hear some of the talk which coupled their names 
with that of the libertine Director. He must have heard 
of the early life of this Creole widow, whose husband, the 
Viscount Beauharnais, had separated from her, accusing 
her of scandalous immorality. He must have heard that 
after her husband had been guillotined, and she herself 
released from prison by the overthrow of Robespierre, 
she had begun a life of fashionable dissipation. He must 
have heard the talk which coupled her name with that of 
such women as Madame Tallien, Madame Hamelin, and a 
dozen other Aspasias of like kind. The names of her 
lovers were bruited about like those of Madame Tallien, 
one of these lovers having been General Hoche. Now that 
she, a widow just out of prison, having no visible income 
or property, and whose children had been apprenticed at 
manual labor, sported a magnificent establishment, wore 
most expensive toilets, led the life of the gayest of 
women, — the favorite of those who had recently beheaded 
her husband, — the world classed her with those with whom 
she was most intimate, and thought her morals could not 
be purer than those of her associates. Justly or unjustly, 
she was regarded as one of the lights of the harem of 
Barras ; and people were beginning to hint that she and 
her extravagance had become a burden of which the 
Director would gladly be rid. 

Napoleon had never come under the spell of such 
society as that which he had now entered. That fleet- 
ing glimpse of polite society which he had caught 
at Valence bore no comparison to this. In his limited 
experience he had not met such women as Madame Tallien 



X JOSEPHINE 129 

and Josephine. He moved in a new sphere. Around 
him was the brilliance of a court. In apartments adorned 
with every ornament and luxury, night was turned into 
day ; and with music, the dance, the song, the feast, men 
and women gave themselves to pleasure. He, the unso- 
cial man of books and camps, was not fitted to shine in 
this social circle. He was uncouth, spoke the language 
with an unpleasant accent, had no graces of manner or 
speech, had nothing imposing in figure or bearing, and 
he felt almost abashed in the high presence of these 
elegant nullities of the drawing-room. 

Shy, ill at ease, he was not much noticed and not much 
liked by the. ladies of the directorial court, with one 
exception — Josephine. Either because of the alleged 
return of the sword, and the good impression then made, 
or because of her natural tact and kindness of heart, 
Madame Beauharnais paid the uncouth soldier those 
little attentions which attract, and those skilful compli- 
ments which flatter, and almost before he was aware of 
it Napoleon was fascinated. Here was a woman to take 
a man off his feet, to inflame him with passion. She was 
no longer young, but she was in the glorious Indian sum- 
mer of her charms. Her perfect form was trained in 
movements of grace. Her musical voice knew its own 
melody, and made the most of it. Her large, dark eyes 
with long lashes were soft and dreamy. Her mouth was 
sweet and sensuous. Her chestnut hair was elegantly 
disordered, her shoulders and bust hid behind no cover- 
ing, and of her little feet and shapely ankles just enough 
was seen to please the eye and stimulate the imagination. 

As to her costume and her general toilet, it was all that 
studied art and cultivated taste could do for generous 



130 NAPOLEON chap. 

nature. Madame Tallien was more beautiful and more 
queenly than Josephine, many others excelled her in wit, 
accomplishments, and mere good looks ; but it may be 
doubted whether any lady of that court, or other courts, 
ever excelled the gentle Josephine in the grace, the tact, 
the charm, which unites in the make-up of a fascinating 
society woman. 

Add to this that she was sensual, elegantly voluptuous, 
finished in the subtle mysteries of coquetry, fully alive to 
the power which the physically tempting woman exerts 
over the passions of men, and it can be better understood 
how this languishing but artful widow of thirty-three 
intoxicated Napoleon Bonaparte, the raw provincial of 
twenty-seven. 

That he was madly infatuated, there can be no doubt. 
He loved her, and he never wholly ceased to love her. 
Never before, never afterward, did he meet a woman who 
inspired him with a feeling at all like that he felt for her. 
If he did not know at that time what she had been, he 
knew after the marriage what she continued to be, and 
he made a desperate effort to break the spell. He could 
not completely do so. She might betray his confidence, 
laugh at his love-letters, neglect his appeals, squander his 
money, sell his secrets, tell him all sorts of falsehoods, 
underrate his value, misconceive his character, and befoul 
his honor with shameless sin ; but against her repentance 
and her childlike prayers for pardon, the iron of his 
nature became as wax. Before those quivering lips, 
before those tear-filled eyes, before that tenderly sweet 
voice, all broken with grief, he could rarely stand. 
" I will divorce her ! " he said fiercely to his brothers, 
when they put before him proofs of her guilt, after the 



X JOSEPHINE 131 

Egyptian campaign. But through the locked door came 
the sobs of the stricken wife, came her plaintive pleadings. 
'■^Mon ami/" she called softly, called hour after hour, 
piteously knocking at the door. It was too much ; the 
cold resolution melted ; the soldier was once more the 
lover, and the door flew open. When the brothers came 
next day to talk further about the divorce, they found 
little Josephine, happy as a bird, sitting on Napoleon's 
knee, and nestling in his arms. 

" Listen, Bourrienne ! " exclaimed Napoleon, joyously, 
on his return to Paris from Marengo, "listen to the 
shouts of the people ! It is sweet to my ears, this 
praise of the French — as sweet as the voice of Joseph- 
ine ! " 

Even when cold policy demanded the divorce, it was he 
who wept the most. " Josephine ! my noble Josephine ! 
The few moments of happiness I have ever enjoyed, I owe 
to you ! " 

And in the closing scene at St. Helena it was the same. 
The dying man thought no more of the Austrian woman. 
Even in his delirium, the wandering memory recalled and 
the fast freezing lips named " Josephine ! " 



Yet calculation played its part in Napoleon's marriage, 
as it did in everything he undertook. He was made to 
believe that Josephine had fortune and high station in 
society. He weighed these advantages in considering the 
match. Both the fortune and the social position would 
be valuable to him. In fact, Josephine had no fortune, 
nor any standing in society. Men of high station were 
her visitors ; their wives were not. All the evidence tends 



132 NAPOLEON char 

to show that Barras arranged the match between his two 
hangers-on, and that the appointment to the command 
of the Army of Italy became involved in the negotiation. 
Napoleon received this coveted commission March 7, 1796 ; 
two days later the marriage occurred. 

On the register both Napoleon and Josephine misrepre- 
sented their ages. He had made himself one year older, 
and she three years younger, than the facts justified. 
There was a difference of six years between them, and 
Madame Letitia angrily predicted that they would have 
no children. 

In forty-eight hours after the marriage, Napoleon set 
out for Italy. At Marseilles he stopped, spending a few 
days with his mother and sisters. On March 22, 1796, he 
was at Nice, the headquarters of the army with which he 
was to win immortality. 

Almost at every pause in his journey Napoleon had 
dashed off hot love-letters to the languid Josephine whom 
he left at Paris. The bride, far from sharing the groom's 
passion, did not even understand it — was slightly bored 
by it, in fact. Now that he had gone off to the wars, she 
relapsed into her favorite dissipations, she and her graceful 
daughter Hortense. 

Madame Junot gives an account of a ball at the banker 
Thellusson's, which not only illustrates the social status of 
Josephine, but also the mixed conditions which the Revo- 
lution had brought about in society. 

Thellusson was a rich man, and not a nobleman ; one of 
those unfortunate creatures who, in the eyes of lank-pursed 
aristocrats, have more money than respectability. In our 
day he would be called a plutocrat, and he would hire some 
bankrupt imbecile with a decayed title to marry his idiotic 



X JOSEPHINE 133 

daughter. For Thellusson, just like a plutocrat with 
more money than respectability, craved what he did not 
have, and was giving entertainments to foist himself up 
the social height. Of course he crowded his sumptuous 
rooms with a miscellany of people, most of whom despised 
him, while they feasted with him. It was one of these 
entertainments, a ball, at which took place the incidents 
Madame Junot relates. 

It seems that a captious, querulous, nose-in-the-air 
Grrand Dame, Madame de D., had been decoyed to this 
Thellusson ball by the assurance of the Marquis de Haute- 
f ort that she would meet none but the best people — her 
friends of the Old Regime. Very anxious to see former 
glories return, and very eager to meet her friends of this 
bewitching Old Regime, Madame de D. not only came to 
the ball herself, but consented to bring her daughter, Ernes- 
tine. As all high-born people should, Madame de D. and 
her daughter Ernestine arrived late. The ballroom was 
brilliant, but crowded. The high-born late comers could 
find no seats, an annoyance which the Marquis de Haute- 
fort, who was on the lookout for them, at once tried to 
remedy. 

A sylph-like young lady, who had been divinely danc- 
ing, was being led to her place beside another beautifully 
dressed woman who seemed to be an elder sister. So 
charming was the look of these seeming sisters that even 
Madame de D. admired. 

" Who are those persons ? " she inquired of the Mar- 
quis, before the seats had been brought. 

" What ! " he exclaimed, " is it possible that you do not 
recognize Viscountess Beauharnais, now Madame Bona- 
parte, and her daughter Hortense ? Come, let me seat 



134 NAPOLEON chap, x 

you beside her ; there is a vacant place by her, and you 
can renew your acquaintance." 

Madame de D. stiffened with indignation and made no 
reply. Taking the old Marquis by the arm, she led him 
to a side room and burst forth : " Are you mad ? Seat 
me beside Madame Bonaparte ! Ernestine would be 
obliged to make the acquaintance of her daughter. I 
will never connect myself with such persons — people 
who disgrace their misfortunes ! " 

Presently there entered the ballroom a woman, queen- 
like, lovely as a dream, dressed in a plain robe of Indian 
muslin, a gold belt about her waist, gold bracelets on her 
arms, and a red cashmere shawl draped gracefully about 
her shoulders. 

" Eh ! my God ! who is that ? " cried Madame de D. 

" That is Madame Tallien," quoth the Marquis. 

The high-born relic of the Old Regime flamed with 
wrath, and was beginning a tirade against the Marquis for 
having dared to bring her to such a place, when the door 
flew open, and in burst a wave of perfume and — Madame 
Hamelin, the fastest woman of the fastest set in Paris. 
All the young men crowded around her. 

" And now in heaven's name. Marquis, who may that be ? " 

At the words demurely uttered, " It is Madame Hame- 
lin," the high-born Madame de D. unfurled the red banner 
of revolt. It was the one shock too much. 

" Come, Ernestine ! Put on your wrap ! We must go, 
child. I can't stand it any longer. To think that the 
Marquis assured me I should meet my former society 
here ! And for the last hour I have been falling from 
the frying-pan into the fire ! Come, Ernestine I " 

And out they went. 



CHAPTER XI 

rpHE year 1796 found the Republic in sorry plight. 
The treasury was empty, labor unemployed, business 
at a standstill. So much paper money, genuine and 
counterfeit, had been issued, that it almost took a cord of 
assignats to pay for a cord of wood. Landlords who had 
leased houses before the Revolution, and who had now to 
accept pay in paper, could hardly buy a pullet with a 
year's rental of a house. There was famine, stagnation, 
maladministration. The hope of the Republic was its 
armies. Drawn from the bosom of the aroused people at 
the time when revolutionary ardor was at its height, the 
soldiers, after three years of service, were veterans who 
were still devoted to republican ideals. Great victories 
had given them confidence, and they only needed proper 
equipment and proper direction to accomplish still greater 
results. At the end of 1795, Moreau commanded the 
army of the Rhine, Jourdan that of the Sambre and 
Meuse, Hoche that of the West. Scherer commanded 
the Army of Italy, where, on November 24, 1795, he beat 
the Austrians and Sardinians in the battle of Loano. He 
did not follow up his victory, however, and the Directory 
complained of him. On his part he complained of the 
Directory. They sent him no money with which to pay 
his troops, no clothing for them, and only bread to feed 

135 



130 NAPOLEON chaf. 

them on. The commissary was corrupt ; and the Direc- 
tory, which was corrupt, winked at the robbery of the 
troops by thievish contractors. Scherer, discouraged, 
wished to resign. It was to this ill-fed, scantily clothed, 
unpaid, and discouraged army that Napoleon was sent; 
and it was this army which he thrilled with a trumpet- 
like proclamation. 

" Soldiers ! You are naked, badly fed. The govern- 
ment owes you much; it can give you nothing. Your 
endurance, and the courage you have shown, do you credit, 
but gain you no advantage, get you no glory. I will lead 
you into the most fertile plains in the world. Rich prov- 
inces, great cities, will be in your power ; and there you 
will find honor, glory, and riches. Soldiers of Italy, can 
you be found wanting in courage ? " 

The army was electrified by this brief address, which 
touched masterfully the chords most likely to respond. 
Courage, pride, patriotism, and cupidity were all invoked 
and aroused. For the first time the soldiers of the Revo- 
lution were tempted with the promise of the loot of the 
vanquished. " Italy is the richest land in the world ; let 
us go and despoil it." Here, indeed, was the beginning 
of a new chapter in the history of republican France. 

Not without a purpose did Napoleon so word his proc- 
lamation. There had been an understanding between 
himself and the Directory that his army must be self- 
sustaining ; he must forage on the enemy as did Wallen- 
stein in the Thirty Years' War. The government had 
exerted itself to the utmost for Napoleon, and had supplied 
him with a small sum of specie and good bills ; but, this 
done, he understood that the Directors could do no more. 
As rapidly as possible he put his army in marching order, 




NAPOLEON 

From a print in the collection of Mr. W. C. Crane. The original engrav- 
ing by G. Fiesinger, after a miniature by Jean-Baptiste-Paulin Gueris.. 
Deposited in the National Library, Paris, 1799 



XI THE ARMY OF ITALY 137 

and then marched. From the defensive attitude in which 
Scherer had left it, he passed at once to the offensive. 
The plan of campaign which Napoleon, the year before, 
had drawn up for the revolutionary committee, and which, 
when forwarded to the army, Kellermann had pronounced 
" the dream of a madman," was about to be inaugurated 
by the lunatic himself. 

The generals of division in the Army of Italy were older 
men, older officers than Napoleon, and they resented his 
appointment. Massena, Augereau, Serurier, Laharpe, Kil- 
maine, Cervoni, but especially the two first, murmured dis- 
contentedly, calling Napoleon, "one of Barras's favorites," 
a "mere street general," a "dreamer" who had "never 
been in action." 

Napoleon, aware of this feeling, adopted the wisest 
course. He drew around himself the line of ceremony, 
repelled with steady look all inclination toward familiar- 
ity, abruptly cut short those who ventured to give advice, 
adopted a stern, imperative, distant manner, took the 
earliest opportunity of showing his absolute self-confi- 
dence and his superiority, indulged in no levity or dissi- 
pation, and issued his orders in a tone so laconic and 
authoritative that, after his first formal interview with 
his division commanders at Albenga, his power over them 
was established. On leaving the tent of the new chief, 

Augereau remarked to Massena, " That little of a 

general frightened me," and Massena confessed to the 
same experience. 

The military plans of the Directory, emanating from 
such men as Carnot and Bonaparte, were bold and practi- 
cal. Austria, which had invaded France from the Rhine, 
was to be held in check there by Moreau and Jourdan at 



138 NAPOLEON chap. 

the same time that she was assailed by way of Italy. The 
three armies of the republic, operating far apart, were to 
cooperate in general design, and were finally to converge 
upon Vienna. Incidentally to this plan of campaign, Genoa 
was to be brought to terms for violations of neutrality; 
the Pope was to be punished for his constant encourage- 
ment to La Vendee and the royalists generally ; and also 
because he had screened the assassins of the French am- 
bassador, Basse ville. Sardinia (whose king was father- 
in-law to the Counts of Provence and Artois, afterward 
respectively Louis XVIII. and Charles X.) was to be 
humbled for its alliance with Austria against F'rance. 

The armies opposed to Napoleon were commanded by 
old men, excellent officers so long as war was conducted 
with a sword in one hand and a book of etiquette in the 
other. Opposed to a man like Napoleon, who set all 
rules at naught, and put into practice a new system, they 
were sadly outclassed and bewildered. 

Napoleon intended to force his way into Italy at the 
point where the Alps and the Apennines join. From Sa- 
vona on the Mediterranean to Cairo it is about nine miles 
by a road practicable for artillery. From Cairo carriage 
roads led into Italy. At no other point could the country 
be entered save by crossing lofty mountains. Therefore 
Napoleon's plan was to turn the Alps instead of crossing 
them, and to enter Piedmont through the pass of Cadi- 
bona. 

Putting his troops in motion, he threw forward toward 
Genoa a detachment under Laharpe. The Austrian com- 
mander, thinking that Bonaparte's plan was to seize Genoa, 
divided his forces into three bodies, — the Sardinians on 
the right at Ceva, the centre under D'Argenteau marching 



XI THE AllMY OF ITALY 139 

toward Montenotte, and the right under Beaulieu himself 
moved from Novi upon Voltri, a town within ten miles 
of Genoa. Between these three divisions there was no 
connection ; and, on account of the mountainous country, 
it was difficult for them to communicate with each other, 
or be concentrated. 

On April 10, 1796, Beaulieu attacked Cervoni, leading 
the van of the French in their march toward Genoa, and 
drove him. 

But D'Argenteau, who had advanced on Montenotte, was 
less fortunate. Colonel Rampon, who commanded twelvt- 
hundred Frenchmen at this point, realized the immense 
importance of checking the Austrian advance, to prevent 
it from falling upon the flank of Napoleon's army as it 
moved along the Corniche road. Throwing himself into 
the redoubt of Montelegino, Rampon barred the way of 
the Austrians with heroic gallantry. Three times he 
threw back the assault of the entire Austrian-Sardinian 
division. During the combat he called upon his little 
band to swear that they would die in the redoubt rather 
than give it up, and the oath was taken with the greatest 
enthusiasm. 

Had D'Argenteau continued his efforts, the oath-bound 
defenders would probably have been exterminated, but he 
did not persevere. He drew off his forces in the evening, 
to wait till next morning, and then renew the attack. 
Morning came, but so did Napoleon. D'Argenteau looked 
around him, and lo ! he was a lost man. Three French 
divisions enveloped the one division of their foe, and to 
the discomfited Austrians was left the dismal alternative 
of surrender or a desperate fight against overwhelming 
odds. The battle was fought, and Napoleon won his first 



140 NAPOLEON chap. 

individual and undivided triumph, the victory of Mon- 
tenotte. The enemy lost colors and cannon, a thousand 
slain, and two thousand prisoners. 

Napoleon had kept the divisions of his army so skilfully 
placed that each could support the other, and all could con- 
centrate. Thus he crushed the Austrian centre, which 
could get no support from its two wings, and with his small 
force triumphed over the larger armies opposed to him. 

But in this his first campaign. Napoleon's tactics pre- 
sented that weak point which was in the end to be his 
ruin ; he risked so much that one slip in his combination 
was too likely to bring about a Waterloo. Had Rampon 
been merely an average officer, or had D'Argenteau been 
a Rampon, or had the gallant twelve hundred been 
merely average soldiers, the road through the pass at 
Montenotte would have been cleared, the Austrians would 
have been on Napoleon's flank, and only a miracle could 
have saved him from disaster. But Napoleon was young, 
and luck was with him : the time was far distant when he 
himself was to be angrily amazed at seeing Fortune mock 
his best combinations, and trivial accidents ruin his cam- 
paigns. 

Swiftly following up his advantage. Napoleon pushed 
forward to Cairo, to wedge his army in between the sepa- 
rated wings of the enemy. At Dego, lower down the val- 
ley of the Bormida, in which the French were now operating, 
were the rallying Austrians, guarding the road from Acqui 
into Lombardy. To the left of the French were the Sar- 
dinians in the gorges of Millesimo, blocking the route 
from Ceva into Piedmont. It was necessary for Napoleon 
to strike the enemy at both points, drive them farther 
apart, so that he might combat each in detail. 



XI THE ARMY OF ITALY 141 

On April 13 the French moved forward, Augereau to 
the attack of the Sardinians, Massena and Laharpe against 
the Austrians. The Sardinians were strongly posted on 
high ground, but the onset of the French carried all be- 
fore it. So impetuous had been the rush of Augereau, 
that one of the divisions of the enemy under General Pro- 
vera was cut off. That brave soldier threw himself into 
the old castle of Cossario, and could not be dislodged. 
Napoleon in person came up and directed three separate 
assaults, which were heavily repulsed. Provera was then 
left in possession, the castle blockaded, and the strength 
of the French reserved for the remaining divisions of the 
Sardinian army. On the next day (April 14) General 
Colli, commander-in-chief of the Sardinian army, made 
every effort to relieve Provera, but was repulsed and 
driven back upon Ceva, farther than ever from the Aus- 
trians. Provera then surrendered. 

While the battle raged at Millesimo, Laharpe had 
crossed the Bormida, his troops wading up to their waists, 
and attacked the Austrian flank and rear at Dego ; at the 
same time Massena struck the line of communication be- 
tween the two armies on the heights of Biastro. Both 
attacks succeeded ; and as Colli retreated on Turin, Beau- 
lieu drew off toward Milan. 

On the morning after these victories a fresh Austrian 
division, which had come from Voltri on the seacoast to 
join the main army, reached Dego, and drove out the 
few French they found there. The appearance of this 
force in his rear gave Napoleon a surprise, and a feel- 
ing of alarm ran through his army. He immediately 
marched upon the town, and gave battle. The French 
were twice beaten off. A third charge led by Lanusse, 



142 NAPOLEON chap. 

waving his hat on the point of his sword, carried all 
before it. 

For his gallantry in this action, Lanusse was made 
brigadier general on the recommendation of Napoleon, 
under whose eyes the splendid charge had been made. 
Lieutenant Colonel Lannes distinguished himself greatly 
also, and Napoleon made him colonel on the field. 

The result of these battles were nine thousand of the 
enemy taken prisoners, other thousands killed, besides 
thirty cannon taken, and a great quantity of baggage. 
Napoleon was now master of the valley of the Bormida, 
and of all the roads into Italy. It was his duty, for 
Carnot had so ordered, to leave the Sardinians and pur- 
sue the Austrians. He took just the opposite course. 
Turning to his left, he entered the gorges of Millesimo, 
and followed the road to Piedmont. Laharpe's division 
was left to watch the Austrians. On April 28 the French 
were in full march upon Mondovi. When they reached 
the height of Mount Lemota, " the richest provinces in 
the world" lay beneath them, stretching from the foot 
of the height as far as eye could reach. The troops, so 
wonderfully led and so daringly fought, were in raptures 
with themselves and their chief. 

As they looked down upon the lovely Italian plains, 
dotted with towns and silvered with rivers, they broke 
into enthusiastic cheers for the young Napoleon. For 
him and for them it was a proud moment. " Hannibal 
forced the Alps; we have turned them." 

Passing the Tanaro, the French entered the plains, and 
for the first time cavalry was in demand. On April 22 
the Sardinians made a stubborn fight at Mondovi. They 
had repulsed Serurier with heavy loss on the day before ; 



XI THE ARMT^ »¥ ITALY 143 

but now Serurier was joined by Massena and the Sar- 
dinians routed. The Piedmontese cavalry, however, 
turned upon the French horse, which had pursued too far, 
and General Stengel, its commander, was killed. Murat, 
at the head of three regiments, dashed against the Sardin- 
ian cavalry with such reckless courage that they broke. 
The Sardinians, defeated at all points, lost three thousand, 
slain or prisoners, eight cannon, ten stand of colors. Colli 
requested an armistice which Napoleon refused to grant. 
The French continued their advance upon Turin. The 
king of Sardinia, Amadeus, wished to prolong the 
struggle ; but his courtiers clamored for peace, and pre- 
vailed. Overtures were made. Napoleon gladly accepted. 
Such terror had Napoleon inspired by his rapid and 
brilliant victories that he practically dictated his own 
terms to the king. The "Keys of the Alps," Coni and 
Tortona, besides Alessandria and other fortresses, were 
surrendered to him pending negotiations, and the immense 
magazines they contained were appropriated to the use 
of the French army. The Sardinian army was to be 
retired from the field, and the roads of Piedmont were to 
be opened to the French. The Austrian alliance should 
cease, and the royalist emigres from France should be 
expelled. This armistice was signed April 29, 1796. As 
to a definitive peace, plenipotentiaries were to be sent at 
once to Paris to conclude it. 

Napoleon had violated both the letter and the spirit of 
his instructions in virtually making peace with the king 
of Sardinia. The Directory, many republicans in France, 
and many in the army maintained that Amadeus, a kins- 
man of the Bourbons, should have been dethroned, and 
his country revolutionized. Augereau and others boldly 



144 NAPOLEON chap. 

declared their disapproval of Napoleon's course. He 
himself was serenely certain that he had done the 
proper thing, and he gave himself no concern about the 
grumblers. 

To Paris he sent his brilliant cavalry-officer, Murat, 
with twenty-one flags taken from the enemy. To his 
troops he issued a stirring address, recounting their great 
achievements, and inspiring them to still greater efforts. 

With hands freed, Napoleon turned upon the Austrians. 
Deceiving them as to the point at which he would cross 
the Po, they prepared for him at one place while he 
dashed at another. While Beaulieu waited at Valenza, 
Napoleon was crossing at Placenza, May 7, 1796. On 
the next day an Austrian division arrived at Fombio, a 
league from Placenza. Napoleon attacked and routed it, 
taking two thousand prisoners and all their cannon. 
Beaulieu put his troops in motion, hoping to catch the 
French in the act of crossing the river. 

As the Austrians, preceded by a regiment of cavalry, 
approached, they struck the advance posts of Laharpe. 
That general rode forward to reconnoitre, and, returning 
by a different road, was fired upon and killed by his own 
troops, in almost precisely the same manner as the great 
Confederate soldier, Stonewall Jackson, was slain at Chan- 
cellorsville. 

The Austrians, realizing that they were too late, drew 
off toward Lodi. On May 10, Napoleon overtook them 
there. The town was on that side of the river Adda on 
which were the French, and Napoleon drove out the 
small detachment of Austrians which held it. 

On the opposite side of the river Beaulieu had stationed 
twelve thousand infantry, two thousand horse, and twenty 



XI THE ARMY OF ITALY 146 

cannon to dispute the passage. A single wooden bridge, 
which the retreating Austrians had not had time to burn, 
spanned the river. In the face of an army sixteen thou- 
sand strong, and twenty pieces of artillery ready to rain 
a torrent of iron on the bridge, Napoleon determined to 
pass. Behind the walls of the town of Lodi the French 
army was sheltered. Napoleon, under fire, went out to 
the bank of the river to explore the ground and form his 
plan. Returning, he selected six thousand grenadiers, and 
to these he spoke brief words of praise and encourage- 
ment, holding them ready, screened behind the houses of 
the town, to dash for the bridge at the word. But he 
had also sent his cavalry up the stream to find a ford to 
cross, and to come upon the Austrian flank. Meanwhile 
his own artillery rained a hail of deadly missiles upon the 
Austrian position, making it impossible for them to ap- 
proach the bridge. The anxious eyes of Napoleon at last 
saw that his cavalry had forded the river, and were turn- 
ing the Austrians' flank. Quick as a flash the word went 
to the waiting grenadiers, and with a shout of " Live the 
Republic," they ran for the bridge. A terrific fire from 
the Austrian batteries played upon the advancing column, 
and the effect was so deadly that it hesitated, wavered, 
seemed about to break. The French generals sprang to 
the front, — Napoleon, Lannes, Massena, Berthier, Cer- 
voni, — rallied the column, and carried it over the bridge. 
Lannes was the first man across, Napoleon the second. 
The Austrian gunners were bayoneted before the infantry 
could come to their support. In a few minutes the Aus- 
trian army was routed. 

The moral effect of this victory, " the terrible passage 
of the bridge of Lodi," as Napoleon himself called it, 



146 NAPOLEON chap. 

was tremendous. Beaulieu afterward told Graham that 
had Napoleon pushed on, he might have taken Mantua 
without difficulty — no preparations for its defence hav- 
ing then been made. The Austrians lost heart, uncov- 
ered Milan in their retreat ; and, five days after the 
battle, Napoleon entered the Lombard capital, under a 
triumphal arch and amid thousands of admiring Italians. 

It was after this battle that some of the soldiers got 
together and gave Napoleon the name of the " Little 
Corporal," an aifectionate nickname which clung to him, 
in the army, throughout his career. His personal bravery 
at Lodi, and his readiness to share the danger, made a 
profound impression on his troops, and when he next 
appeared he was greeted with shouts of " Live the Little 
Corporal." 

Napoleon asked a Hungarian prisoner, an old officer, 
what he now thought of the war. The prisoner, not 
knowing that Napoleon himself was the questioner, re- 
plied : " There is no understanding it at all. You 
French have a young general who knows nothing about 
the rules of war. To-day he is in your front, to-morrow 
in the rear. Now he is on your left, and then on your 
right. One does not know where to place one's self. 
Such violation of the rules is intolerable." 

Upon the victor himself Lodi made a lasting impres- 
sion ; it was the spark, as he said afterward, " which 
kindled a great ambition." Already Napoleon had begun 
to levy contributions and to seize precious works of art. 
The Duke of Parma, pleading for peace and protection, 
had been required to pay $400,000, to furnish sixteen 
hundred horses and large quantities of provisions. His 
gallery was stripped of twenty of its best paintings, one of 



XI THE ARMY OF ITALY 147 

which was the "Jerome" of Correggio. The Duke offered 
$200,000 to redeem this painting, but Napoleon refused. 
The offence which this duke had committed was his 
adhesion to the coalition against France, and his con- 
tributing three thousand soldiers to aid in the glorious 
work of maintaining feudalism. 

In France the effect of Napoleon's victories upon the 
excitable, glory-loving people was prodigious. His name 
was on every tongue. Crowds gathered around the 
bulletins, and the streets rang with acclamations. Murat 
and Junot, bringing to Paris the captured colors, were 
given enthusiastic ovations by government and people. 
But the Directors began to be uneasy. They would have 
been more or less than human had they relished the 
autocratic manner in which Napoleon behaved. He had 
ignored their plans and their instructions. He had 
developed an imperiousness which brooked no control. 
His fame was dwarfing all others to an extent which gave 
rise to unpleasant forebodings. All things considered, 
the Directors thought it would be a good idea to divide 
the Italian command. To that effect they wrote Napo- 
leon. In reply he offered to resign. A partner he 
would not have : he must be chief, or nothing. The Di- 
rectors dared not make such an issue with him at a time 
when all France was in raptures over his triumphs ; and 
they yielded. 



CHAPTER XII 

rpHROUGHOUT Italy the principles of the French 
Revolution had made considerable progress, and in 
every province there were intelligent men who welcomed 
the advent of Napoleon as the dawn of a new era. The 
young warrior was an astute politician, and he assumed 
the pose of liberator. With the same pen he wrote 
proclamations to Italy and letters to France : in the one 
he dwelt on the delights of liberty ; in the other on the 
amount of the loot. And while apparently there was 
shameful inconsistency here, really there was much sin- 
cerity. He was in earnest when he spoke of tributes to 
be levied upon princes and municipalities ; he was also in 
earnest when he spoke of planting in Italy the principles 
of the French Revolution. The extreme type of misgov- 
ernment which prevailed throughout the Italian penin- 
sula shocked his reason, his sense of justice. 

He despised the pampered nobles who could neither 
govern, fight, nor die like men. He loathed an idle, 
ignorant, ferocious priesthood which robbed the peas- 
antry in the name of religion, and which compelled rich 
and poor to bow before such idols as the black doll of 
Loretto. Hence, while he compelled the defeated enemies 
of France, the ruling princes, to pay heavy sums by way 
of indemnity, he did, in fact, replace the old feudal insti- 
tutions with new ones and better ones. 

148 



CHAP. XII 



MILAN 149 



Napoleon has been heartily abused because he stripped 
the art galleries of Italy of their gems — statuary and 
paintings. French writers of the royalist school swell 
the cry and emphasize the guilt. Lanfrey, particularly, 
calls the world to witness the fact that he hangs his head 
in shame, so much is his conscience pricked by Napo- 
leon's seizure of pictures. How absurd is all this ! If to 
the victor belong the spoils, where is the line to be drawn ? 
If one may take the purse of the vanquished, his jewels, 
his house, his lands, why are his pictures sacred ? If the 
civilized world insists upon maintaining the trained sol- 
dier, and continues to hunger after the alleged glories of 
wars of conquest, we must get accustomed to the results. 
Wars of conquest are waged for very practical purposes. 
We combat the enemy because he happens to be in pos- 
session of something which we want and which we mean 
to have. When we have taken the trouble to go up 
against this adversary, prepared to smite him hip and 
thigh, in robust, Old-Testament style, and have prevailed 
against him by the help of the Lord, shall we not Bibli- 
cally despoil him of all such things as seem good in our 
own eyes ? Are we to allow the vanquished heathen — 
heathen because vanquished — to choose for us those 
things which we shall take with us when we go back 
home ? If mine enemy has a golden crown, or a golden 
throne, the appearance and the weight and the fineness of 
which please me exceedingly, shall I not take it ? If I 
happen to be a king, shall I not include such trophies 
among my " crown jewels " in my strong " Tower of 
London " ? 

' And if by chance there should be in the land of mine 
enemy, the land which the Lord has given me as the con- 



150 NAPOLEON chap. 

quest of my sword, a diamond of surpassing size and 
purity, — a gem so rich, and rare that the mouth of the 
whole world waters at the mere mention of Kohinoor — 
the heathen name thereof, — shall I not take this rare gem 
from among unappreciative heathen, and carry it to my 
own land, where people worship the only true and living 
God and cultivate ennobling fondness for the best dia- 
monds ? If I should chance to be king of my native land, 
shall I not gladden the heart of my queen by the gift of 
the marvellous gem, so that she may wear it upon her 
royal brow, and so outshine all royal ladies whomsoever ? 
Between such trophies as these and paintings, Napoleon 
could see no difference in principle. Numerous are the 
historians, tracking dutifully after other historians, who 
have been, these many years, heaping abuse upon Napo- 
leon concerning those Italian paintings. It so happens 
that while the present chronicler has been engaged with 
this book, the world has witnessed quite a variety of war- 
fare. There has been l^attle and conquest in China, South 
Africa, the Philippines; and the Christian soldiers of 
Europe and America have prevailed mightily against the 
heathen and the insurgent. There has been much victory 
and much loot ; and with the record of what our Chris- 
tian soldiers took in Africa, Asia, and the islands of the 
sea fresh in mind, it seems to me that we might all be- 
come silent about Napoleon's Italian "works of art." 



Lombardy, in 1796, was a possession of the house of 
Austria, and was nominally ruled by the Archduke Ferdi- 
nand, who lived at Milan in magnificent state. The vic- 
torious approach of the French filled him and his court 



XII MILAN 151 

with terror, and he called on the Church for help. The 
priests aroused themselves, put forth the arm ecclesiastic, 
and endeavored to avert the storm by religious ceremo- 
nies. The bones of the saints were brought out, proces- 
sions formed, and street parades held. Also there were 
chants, prayers, mystical invocations. Heaven was im- 
plored to interfere and save the city. Heaven, as usual, 
had no smiles for the weak; the angels, who save no 
doves from hawks, no shrieking virgin from the ravisher, 
concerned themselves not at all (so far as any one could 
see) with the terrors of the priests and the nobles of 
Milan. The Archduke with his Duchess, and the ever 
faithful few, deserted his beautiful capital; and Count 
Melzi went forth with a deputation to soften the wrath 
of the conqueror. 

Napoleon's terms were not hard. Money he needed to 
pay his troops, also provisions, clothing, munitions of war. 
These he must have, and these Milan could supply. About 
$4,000,000 was the sum demanded, but he allowed this to 
be reduced by payments in such things as the army needed. 
The conquered province was reorganized on a liberal basis, 
a national guard enrolled, new ofi&cials appointed, and a 
constitution framed for it — all this being provisional, of 
course. 

The Duke of Modena sued for peace, and was made to 
pay 12,000,000, furnish provisions and horses, and to give 
up many precious works of art. 

During the negotiations with Modena, Salicetti came 
into Napoleon's room one day and said : " The brother of 
the Duke is here with four coffers of gold, 4,000,000 
francs. He offers them to you in his brother's name, and 
I advise you to accept them." 



152 NAPOLEON chap. 

" Thank you," answered Napoleon, " I shall not for 
that sum place myself in the power of the Duke of 
Modena." 

Such rivulets of gold as Napoleon had set flowing into 
the army chest had far-reaching influence. First of all, 
the army itself was put into first-class condition. The 
troops were newly clothed, well fed, punctually paid. 
The pockets of the generals were filled with coin. The 
cavalry was splendidly mounted ; the artillery brought to 
perfection. As a war machine, the Army of Italy was 
now one of the best the world ever saw. The Directors 
were not forgotten. Napoleon gladdened the souls of 
Barras and his colleagues with 11,000,000 in hard cash. 
Other millions followed the first, Napoleon doling out 
the sums judiciously, until his contributions exceeded 
$4,000,000. 

To Moreau, sitting idly on the Rhine, purse empty and 
spirit low, Napoleon sent a million in French money. 
To Kellermann, commanding in Savoy, he sent 1,200,000 
francs. It is hardly necessary to add that he kept the 
lion's share of all his booty for his own army chest. 
Austria was rousing herself to renew the struggle, France 
could send him no supplies, and it would have been 
lunacy for him to have emptied his pockets at the open- 
ing of another campaign. 

After a rest of a week in Milan, the French army was 
pushed forward toward Austria. Napoleon advanced his 
headquarters to Lodi on the 24th of May, 1796. Shortly 
after his arrival, he learned that a revolt had broken out 
behind him, that the French garrison at Pavia had sur- 
rendered, and that insurrection had spread to many towns 
of Lombardy, and that in Milan itself there was revolt. 



XH MILAN 153 

He immediately turned back with a small force, re- 
entered Milan, fought the insurgents at Binasco, where 
Lannes took and burned the town, and then with fifteen 
hundred men stormed Pavia, defended by thirty thou- 
sand insurgents, forced his way in, and gave it over to 
pillage, butchery, and the flames. The French officer 
who had signed the order of capitulation was court-mar- 
tialled and shot. 

Why had the Italians risen against their liberator? 
There are those who say that his exactions in money, 
provisions, horses, paintings, and so forth caused it. This 
could hardly have been the sole cause, for Napoleon's 
exactions did not directly reach the peasants. His heavy 
hand was felt by the rich men of the Church and the State ; 
but upon the poor he laid no burden. A more reasonable 
explanation seems to be that the priests, encouraged by 
aristocrats, preached a crusade against the French maraud- 
ers, who looted rich temples, and made spoil of things 
that were believed to be holy. Besides, these marauders 
were infidel French who had trampled upon the Church 
in France, confiscating the riches thereof, and ousting fat 
clericals from high, soft places. The Pope knew that his 
turn would come, — Basseville's ghost not yet being laid, 
— and that he would have to suffer for all the cruel blows 
he had aimed at republican France. Therefore as Napo- 
leon marched off to meet the Austrians, who were re- 
ported to be mustering in overwhelming numbers, it 
was thought to be a good time to kindle flames in his 
rear. Priests rushed frantically to and fro, the cross was 
lifted on high, church bells pealed from every steeple, 
and the ignorant peasants flew to arms to win a place in 
heaven by shedding the blood of heretics. 



154 NAPOLEON chap. 

The insurrection stamped out, Napoleon proved what Tie 
thought of its origin. He demanded hostages, not from 
the peasants, but from the nobles. The hostages were 
given, and there was no further revolt. 

The Austrian army, in its retreat from Lodi, had taken 
up the line of the Mincio, its left at Mantua and its right 
at Peschiera, a city belonging to Venice. This violation 
of neutral ground by Beaulieu gave Napoleon an excuse, 
and he seized upon the Venetian town of Brescia. He 
proclaimed his purpose to do nothing against Venice, to 
preserve strict discipline, and to pay for whatever he might 
take. Pursuing his march, he again deceived the aged 
Beaulieu as to the place where he meant to cross the river ; 
and he was over the Mincio before the Austrians could 
mass sufficient troops to make any considerable resistance. 
On the other side of the river. Napoleon, in passing with 
a small escort from the division of Augereau to that of 
Massena, narrowly missed falling into the hands of an 
Austrian corps which was hastening up the river to join 
Beaulieu. Napoleon, after having ridden some distance 
with Augereau, had returned to Valeggio, where he stopped 
to get a foot-bath to relieve a headache. At this moment 
the light cavalry of the enemy dashed into the village. 
There was barely time to sound the alarm, close the gates 
of the carriage-way, and to post the escort to defend the 
place. Napoleon ran out the back way with only one boot 
on, made his escape through the garden, jumped on his 
horse, and galloped as hard as he could to Massena, whose 
troops, near by, were cooking their dinner. Massena 
promptly aroused his men, rushed them against the enemy 
— and then it was the turn of the Austrians to run. 

The danger which he had incurred caused Napoleon to 



XII MILAN 165 

form a personal guard for his own protection. Called by 
the modest name of Cruides at first, the force swelled in 
numbers and importance until it became the immortal 
Imperial Guard. Its commander was Bessieres, a young 
officer of humble birth, who had attracted Napoleon's notice 
during the campaign by his coolness and courage. He 
became Marshal of France and Duke of Istria. 

In the fighting which took place at Borghetta, the cav- 
alry began to show its capacity for achieving brilliant 
results. It was young Murat, the innkeeper's son, who 
inspired, led it, and impetuously fought it. A finer cava- 
lier never sat a horse. A better leader of cavalry never 
headed a charge. It was a sight to see him, — brilliantly 
dressed, superbly mounted, on fire with the ardor of bat- 
tle, leading his magnificent squadrons to the charge. Even 
Napoleon thrilled with unwonted admiration in looking 
upon Murat in battle. " Had I been at Waterloo," said 
Murat, the outcast, in 1815, with a flash of his old pride, 
"the day had been ours." 

And the sad, lonely man of St. Helena assented : — 

"It is probable. There were turning-points in that 
battle when such a diversion as Murat could have made 
might have been decisive." 

Beaulieu fell back to the Tyrol, and Napoleon occupied 
Peschiera. He was furiously angry with Venice because 
she had allowed Beaulieu to take possession of this town, 
which cost the lives of many Frenchmen before it was 
retaken. The Venetian Senate, bewildered and dismayed, 
sent envoys to propitiate the terrible young warrior. 
Napoleon assumed his haughtiest tone, and threatened 
vengeance. 

Finally, when the Venetians had opened to him the 



156 NAPOLEON chap. 

gates of Verona, and had agreed to supply his army, he 
began to soften, and to talk to the envoys of a possible 
alliance between Venice and France. 

On June 5, 1796, one of these envoys wrote of Napoleon, 
in a letter to Venice, " That man will some day have great 
influence over his country." 

The French were now masters of the line of the Adige, 
which Napoleon considered the strongest for the defence 
of Italy. This line was of vast importance to him, for he 
knew that Austria was recruiting her strength and pre- 
paring to retrieve her losses. He had won Italy ; could 
he hold it ? That was now the issue. 

Before reenforcements from Austria could arrive. Na- 
poleon calculated that he would have time to punish the 
Pope and to humble Naples. Leaving Mantua invested, 
and the line of the Adige well defended, he took one divi- 
sion and turned to the South. There were many reasons 
why he should do so. The Bourbons of Tuscany had 
welcomed the English to Leghorn, and in Naples prepara- 
tions were being made to equip a large force to act against 
the French. Genoa was giving trouble, her nobles being 
very unfriendly to France. In Genoese territories troops 
of disbanded Piedmontese soldiers, escaped Austrian pris- 
oners and deserters, infested the Apennine passes, stopped 
couriers, plundered convoys, and massacred French de- 
tachments. 

Reaching Milan, Napoleon directed Augereau upon 
Bologna, and Vaubois on Modena. To the Senate of 
Genoa was sent a haughty letter demanding to know 
whether that state could put down the disorders of 
which the French complained. Murat, the bearer of the 
message, read it to the trembling Senate. It had the 



xu MILAN 167 

effect desired : Genoa promised, and did all that was 
asked. 

Lannes, witli twelve hundred men, sent to chastise the 
feudatory families of Austria and Naples, resident in 
Genoese territories, did the work with energy and success. 
Chateaux of conspiring nobles were burnt ; and wherever 
any of the bands which had been molesting the French 
could be found, they were summarily shot down. 

Naples was cowed before she had been struck, and she 
sent in her submission to the conqueror. He dealt with 
her leniently. She must abandon the coalition against 
France, open all her ports to the French, withdraw her 
ships from England, and deliver to Napoleon the twenty- 
four hundred cavalry which she had furnished to Austria. 
This armistice signed, he turned his attention and his 
troops in the direction of Rome. Bologna, a papal fief, 
was seized. Ferrara, another papal domain, threw off the 
papal yoke. 

The Pope, smitten with fear, sent Azara, the ambassa- 
dor of Spain, to negotiate terms ; and again Napoleon 
was mild. He required that Ancona should receive a 
French garrison, that Bologna and Ferrara should remain 
independent, that an indemnity of 21,000,000 francs should 
be paid, that one hundred statues and paintings should be 
given up, besides grain and cattle for the army. The 
Pope consented. Here again Napoleon gave great offence 
to the Directory, and to many republicans in France, as 
well as in the army. 

The Pope had been the centre of the hostility against 
the Revolution and its principles. He had actively coop- 
erated with the enemies of France, had torn her with civil 
strife, had suffered her ambassador to be brutally mur- 



158 NAPOLEON chap, xii 

dered, and had given aid, comfort, blessings, and pontifical 
inspiration to her enemies wherever he could. The Direc- 
tory wished that the papal power should be totally de- 
stroyed. Napoleon had no such intention. Catholicism 
was a fact, a power, and he proposed to deal with it 
accordingly. He accepted the money and the paintings 
and the marbles : Basseville's ghost being left to lay itself 
as best it could. In delicate compliment to the Pope, the 
young conqueror did not enter Rome. In all his passings 
to and fro, this modern Caesar, this restorer of the Empire 
of the West, never set his foot in the Sacred City. 

On June 26, 1796, Napoleon crossed the Apennines 
into Tuscany. By forced marches, a division was thrown 
forward to Leghorn, where, it was hoped, the English 
ships would be taken. Warned in time, they had sailed 
away, but the French seized large quantities of English 
goods. Leaving a garrison at Leghorn, Napoleon pro- 
ceeded to Florence, where the grand-duke feted him roy- 
ally. The grand-duchess did not appear at the banquet: 
she was "indisposed." Italy having been pacified in this 
swift manner, Napoleon returned to his army headquar- 
ters near Mantua. 



CHAPTER XIII 

Tj^VEN Austria could now see that Beaulieu was no 
match for Napoleon. In his place the Emperor sent 
the aged Wurmser, another officer excellent in the old 
leisurely cut-and-dried style of campaigning. If Napo- 
leon would rest satisfied to wage war according to the 
rules laid down in the books, Wurmser would perhaps 
crush him, for to the 34,000 French there would be 53,000 
Austrians in the field, not counting the 15,000 Austrians 
who were blockaded in Mantua by 8000 French. 

Napoleon was at Milan when news came that Wurmser 
had issued from the mountain passes and was in full 
march to envelop the French below Lake Garda. Has- 
tening back to the front. Napoleon established headquar- 
ters at Castel-Nuovo. Wurmser was confident; Napo- 
leon anxious, watchful, and determined. The Austrians 
were divided into three columns, — one came down the 
western bank of Lake Gifirda, and the other two down 
the eastern shore. At first the Austrians drove the 
French at all points, and Napoleon's line was broken, 
July 30, 1796. This brought on the crisis in which it 
is said that he lost his nerve, threw up the command, 
and was saved by doughty Augereau. The evidence 
upon which this alleged loss of nerve is based is of the 
frailest, and the undisputed record of the campaign dis- 

159 



160 NAPOLEON chap. 

closes Napoleon's plan, Napoleon's orders, and Napo- 
leon's presence throughout. His only hope was to pre- 
vent the junction of the Austrian divisions. Could he 
hold two off while he concentrated on the third? Practi- 
cally the same tactics which won at Montenotte prevailed 
again. While Wurmser was passing forward to Mantua by 
forced marches, Napoleon had already called in Serurier ; 
and when the Austrians arrived, expecting to capture the 
besiegers, no besiegers were there. They had spiked their 
siege guns, destroyed surplus ammunition, and gone to join 
the main army of Napoleon, and to aid in crushing one of 
Wurmser's lieutenants while Wurmser was idling use- 
lessly at Mantua. Almost identically the same thing had 
occurred at Montenotte, where Beaulieu had rushed upon 
Voltri to capture French who had been withdrawn, and 
who were destroying Colli at Montenotte while Beaulieu 
at Voltri talked idly with Lord Nelson of the English 
fleet, devising plans whereby Napoleon was to be annihi- 
lated. Napoleon struck the first blow at Quasdanovitch, 
who led the Austrian division which had come down the 
western side of the lake. At Lonato, July 31, 1796, the 
French beat the Austrians, driving them back, recovering 
the line of communication with Milan which had been 
cut. Then Napoleon hastened back to confront the Aus- 
trian centre. Twenty-five thousand Austrians, marching 
to join Quasdanovitch, reached Lonato. On August 3, 
Napoleon threw himself upon this force, and almost de- 
stroyed it. So demoralized were the Austrians that a force 
of four thousand surrendered to twelve hundred French. 
Next day Wurmser came up offering battle. Stretch- 
ing his line too far and leaving his centre weak. Napoleon 
struck him there, beat him with heavy loss, and sent him 




(x!ta 

Pi 



Pit % 



i5 




xiir MANTUA 161 

flying back toward the mountains. In these various 
operations, Austria had lost about forty thousand men ; 
France about ten thousand. Mantua had been revict- 
ualled, and the French now invested it again. Their siege 
outfit having been destroyed, they could only rely upon 
a blockade to starve the enemy out. 

Both armies were exhausted, and there followed a 
period of rest. Reenforcements were received by Wurm- 
ser, and by Napoleon also. The Austrians still outnum- 
bered him, but Napoleon took the offensive. Wurmser 
had committed the familiar mistake of dividing his forces. 
Napoleon fell upon Davidovitch at Roveredo and routed 
him. Then turning upon Wurmser, who was advancing 
to the relief of Mantua, Napoleon captured at Primolano 
the Austrian advance guard. Next day, September 8, 
1796, he defeated the main army at Bassano. 

Wurmser was now in a desperate situation. Shut in 
by the French on one side and the river Adige on the 
other, his ruin seemed inevitable. By the mistake of a 
lieutenant colonel, Legnano had been left by the French 
without a garrison, and the bridge not destroyed. Here 
Wurmser crossed, and continued his retreat on Mantua. 
He gained some brilliant successes over French forces, 
which sought to cut him off, and he reached Mantua in 
such good spirits that he called out the garrison and 
fought the battle of St. George. Defeated in this, he 
withdrew into the town. He had lost about twenty-seven 
thousand men in the brief campaign. 

At length the armies on the Rhine had got in motion. 
Moreau crossed that river at Kehl, defeated the Austrians, 
and entered Munich. Jourdan crossed at Dusseldorf, 
and won the battle of Alten Kirchen. Then the young 



162 NAPOLEON chap. 

Archduke Charles, learning a lesson from Napoleon, 
left a small force to hold Moreau in check, and massed 
his strength against Jourdan. The French were badly- 
beaten, and both their armies fell back to the Rhine. 
The original plan of a junction of Jourdan, Moreau, and 
Bonaparte for an advance upon Vienna was, for the 
present, frustrated. 

Encouraged by the success, Austria sent a new army 
of fifty-three thousand men, under Alvinczy, to recover 
the lost ground in Italy. Napoleon had about forty thou- 
sand troops, several thousand of whom were in hospitals, 
and once more his safety depended upon preventing the 
concentration of the enemy. 

As in the former campaign, Austria won the first en- 
counters. Vaubois was driven to Trent, and from Trent to 
Roveredo, and from thence to Rivoli. Massena fell back, 
before superior numbers, from Bassano. Napoleon, with 
the division of Augereau, went to Massena's support. All 
day, November 6, 1796, Augereau fought at Bassano, and 
Massena at Citadella. Alvinczy gave ground, but the 
French retreated, because of the defeat of Vaubois. It 
seemed now that the two Austrian divisions would unite, 
but they did not. At Rivoli a French division, eager to 
win back the respect of their chief, who had publicly 
reproved them and degraded their commander, held 
Davidovitch in check, and prevented his junction with 
Alvinczy. Fearful that Rivoli might be forced, and the 
Austrian divisions united. Napoleon again attacked Al- 
vinczy. This time the French were repulsed with heavy 
loss, some three thousand men (November 13, 1796). 
Napoleon now had a fresh Austrian army on each flank, 
and Wurmser on his rear. 



xiii MANTUA 163 

Should the three Austrian commanders cooperate, the 
French were lost. But Napoleon calculated upon there 
being no cooperation, and he was correct. Nevertheless, 
he almost desponded, and in the army there was discour- 
agement. 

As night closed round the dejected French, Napoleon 
ordered his troops to take up arms. Leaving a garrison 
to hold the town, he led his troops out of Verona, and 
crossed to the right side of the Adige. Apparently he 
was in retreat upon the Mincio. Down the Adige he 
marched as far as Ronco. There he recrossed the river 
on a bridge of boats which he had prepared. On this 
march the French had followed the bend which the river 
here makes to the Adriatic. Therefore he had reached 
the rear of the enemy simply by crossing the Adige and 
following its natural curve. Arrived at Ronco and cross- 
ing the river again, the troops saw at a glance the mas- 
terly move their chief had made ; their gloom gave way to 
enthusiastic confidence. 

It is a marshy country about Ronco, and the roadways 
are high dikes lifted above the swamp, — ^^one of these raised 
roads leading to Verona in Alvinczy's front, another lead- 
ing from Ronco to Villanova in the Austrian rear. Early 
in the morning, November 15, 1796, Massena advanced 
from Ronco on the first of these roads, and Augereau on 
the other. Massena passed the swamp without opposition, 
but Augereau met an unforeseen and bloody resistance 
at the bridge of Arcole, a town between Ronco and Villa- 
nova, where the little river Alpon crosses the road on its 
way to the Adige. Two battalions of Croats with two 
pieces of artillery defended this bridge, and so bravely 
was their task done that Augereau's column was thrown 



164 NAPOLEON chap. 

back in disorder. There was no better soldier in the 
army than he, and Augereau seized the standard himself, 
rallied his men, and led them to the bridge. Again the 
Croats drove them back with enfilading fire. The bridge 
must be taken ; it was a matter of vital necessity, and 
Napoleon dashed forward to head the charge. Seizing 
the colors, he called upon the troops to follow, and with 
his own hands planted the flag on the bridge. But the 
fire of the enemy was too hot, their bayonets too deter- 
mined : the Croats drove the French from the bridge, and 
in the confusion of the backward struggle, Napoleon got 
pushed off the dike into the swamp where he sank to his 
waist. " Forward ! forward ! To save our general ! " 

With this cry the French grenadiers rallied their broken 
line, made a desperate rush, drove back the Croats, and 
pulled Napoleon out of the mud. 

It was in the charge led by Napoleon that Muiron, his 
aide, threw himself in front of his chief, as a shield, saved 
Napoleon's life, and lost his own. 

It was not till a French corps, which had crossed the 
Adige lower down at a ferry, came upon the Austrian 
flank, that the French were able to carry the bridge and 
take Arcole. By this time, owing to stubborn fight at the 
bridge, Alvinczy had had time to get out of the trap which 
Napoleon had planned. The Austrians took up a new 
position farther back, and were still superior in numbers 
and position to the French. If Davidovitch would only 
brush Vaubois out of his way and come upon Napoleon's 
flank, and if Wurmser would only bestir himself against 
the weakened blockading force at Mantua and make trou- 
ble in Napoleon's rear, it would be the French, not the 
Austrians, who would feel the inconvenience of the trap J 



XIII MANTUA 165 

But Davidovitch did nothing; Wurmser did nothing; and 
Alvinczy continued to make mistakes. For when Napo- 
leon, after the first day's fighting before Arcole, fell back 
to Ronco in fear that Davidovitch might come, Alvinczy 
took up the idea that the French were in full retreat, and 
he started in pursuit, using the raised roads for his march. 
On these dikes only the heads of columns could meet, the 
Austrian superiority in numbers was of no advantage, 
and Napoleon could not have been better served than by 
the offer of battle under such conditions. Again there 
was a day of fighting. Napoleon attempted to get to 
Alvinczy's rear by crossing the Alpon, but failed. Night 
came, both armies drew off, and nothing decisive had been 
done. 

Again Napoleon fell back to Ronco to be prepared for 
Davidovitch, and again the son of David was not at hand. 
Neither was Wurmser doing anything in the rear. In 
front, Alvinczy, stubbornly bent on staying just where 
Napoleon wanted him, came upon the narrow dikes 
again. Once more it was a battle between heads of 
columns, where the veteran French had the advantage 
of the recent recruits of Austria. For a moment the 
giving way of part of the bridge the French had made 
over the Adige threatened them with disaster. The 
Austrians came forward in force to cut off a demi- 
brigade left on their side of the broken bridge. But 
the bridge was repaired, French troops rushed over, and 
threw the Austrians back on the marsh. Napoleon laid 
an ambuscade in some willows bordering the Alpon, and 
when the enemy, in retreat, passed along the dike, the 
soldiers in the ambuscade poured a deadly fire on their 
flank, and then charged with the bayonet. Taken by 



166 NAPOLEON chap. 

surprise, assailed on front of flank, some three thousand 
Croats were thrown into the swamp, where most of them 
perished. 

Calculating that in the battles of the last three days 
Alvinczy had lost so many men that his army did not now 
outnumber the French, Napoleon determined to leave 
the swamps, advance to the open, dry ground, and beat 
the Austrians in pitched battle. Crossing the Alpon by 
a bridge built during the night, the French fought a 
sternly contested field on the afternoon of the 17th of 
November, 1796, and finally won it. Napoleon had sent 
about twenty-five mounted guides with four trumpets to 
the swamp on which rested the Austrian left, and this 
trifling force breaking through the swainp, and making a 
tremendous noise with their trumpets, caused the Austrians 
to think that another ambuscade was being sprung. This 
fear, falling upon them at a time when they were almost 
overcome by the stress of actual battle, decided the day. 
Alvinczy retreated on Montebello, and the long struggle 
was ended. It is said that Napoleon, who had not taken 
off his clothes for a week, and who for nearly three days 
had not closed his eyes, threw himself upon his couch 
and slept for thirty-six hours. 

At last Davidovitch roused himself, swept Vaubois 
out of his path, and came marching down to join Alvinczy. 
There was no Alvinczy to join ; Davidovitch was some 
three or more days too late. And Wurmser down at 
Mantua made brilliant sally, to create apprehension in 
the rear. The old man was a week or so behind time. 
The grip of Napoleon still held ; the line of the Adige 
was intact. 

But while Napoleon had succeeded in holding his own, 



xni MANTUA 167 

he had done so by such desperate straits and narrow 
margins, leaving the Austrian armies unbroken, that the 
Emperor decided on another great effort. Recruits and 
volunteers were enrolled to reenf orce Alvinczy, and hurried 
forward, bearing a banner embroidered by the Empress. 
Once more the Austrians took the field with superior 
numbers ; once more these forces were divided ; once 
more Napoleon beat them in detail by skilful concentration. 

General Provera was to lead a division to the relief of 
Mantua ; Alvinczy was to overwhelm Napoleon. Provera 
was to follow the Brenta, pass the Adige low down, and 
march across to Mantua. Alvinczy was to move along 
the Adige from Trent, and fall upon the main French 
army, which it was hoped would have been drawn to the 
lower Adige by the demonstration of Provera. 

The heights of Rivoli on Monte Baldo command the 
valley of the Adige ; and no sooner had the preliminary 
movements of the enemy revealed their plan of campaign, 
than Napoleon sent orders to Joubert to seize and fortify 
the plateau of Rivoli, and to hold it at all hazards. This 
was on January 13, 1797. That night Napoleon himself 
marched to Rivoli with twenty thousand men, reaching the 
heights by a forced march at two in the morning. 

Alvinczy felt so confident of enclosing and capturing the 
small force of Joubert that he had gone to sleep, ranging 
his army in a semicircle below to await the dawn, when 
Joubert was to be taken immediately after breakfast. 

When Napoleon arrived, between midnight and day, he 
looked down from the heights, and there below, peacefully 
snoring and bathed in moonlight, were the confident 
Austrians — five divisions strong. Leaving them to 
slumber, he spent the balance of the wintry night get- 



168 NAPOLEON chap. 

ting ready for the battle that would come with the day. 
As morning broke, the Austrians attacked the French 
right at St. Mark, and the contest soon raged along the 
whole line as far as Caprino, where the French left was 
driven. Berthier and Massena restored order, and re- 
pulsed every charge. Strongly posted on the heights, 
the French had all the advantage. Alvinczy found it 
impossible to use his cavalry or artillery with effect, and 
many of his troops could not be brought into action. In 
relative position. Napoleon held the place of Meade at 
Gettysburg, and Alvinczy that of Lee. Perhaps Napoleon 
was even better intrenched than Meade, and Alvinczy less 
able to bring his forces up the heights than Lee. The re- 
sult was what it was almost bound to be — the Austrians 
were routed with terrible loss, and fled in disorder. So 
great was the panic that a young French officer, Rene, in 
command of fifty men at a village on Lake Garda, success- 
fully " bluffed " and captured a retreating body of fifteen 
hundred Austrians. Joubert and Murat pursued vigor- 
ously, and in two days they took thirteen thousand prison- 
ers. It was not till the battle of Rivoli had raged for 
three hours that Alvinczy realized that he was attempting 
the foolhardy feat of storming the main French army, 
posted by Napoleon himself, in almost impregnable posi- 
tions. 

Leaving Joubert and Murat to follow up the victory. 
Napoleon went at full speed to head off Provera. That 
gallant officer had fought his way against Augereau and 
Guieu, and had reached the suburb of St. George, before 
Mantua, with six thousand men. He had lost the re- 
mainder on the way — some twelve thousand. Through- 
out the day of January 15, 1797, he was held in check by 



XIII MANTUA 169 

Serurier. Next morning the battle was renewed ; but 
Napoleon had arrived. Provera attacked the French in 
front; Wurmser in the rear. Serurier threw Wurmser 
back into Mantua; and Victor, who had come with Napo- 
leon, vanquished Provera so completely that he laid down 
his arms. This action is known as that of La Favorita 
(the name of a country-seat of the Dukes of Mantua near 
by), and threw into the hands of the French six thousand 
prisoners, including the Vienna volunteers and many 
cannon. One of the trophies was the banner embroidered 
by the Empress of Austria. 

A few days later Mantua capitulated, and the last 
stronghold of the Austrians in Italy was in the hands of 
the French. 

Critics who understand all the mysteries of Napoleon's 
character say that there was not a trace of chivalry or 
generosity in him. Yet at Mantua he, a young soldier, 
would not stay to gloat over the humiliation of the veteran 
Wurmser. He praised that old man by word and by let- 
ter, he granted him liberal terms, and he left the older 
Serurier to receive Wurmser's sword. Was not this deli- 
cate, even chivalrous to Wurmser ? Was it not even more 
generous to Serurier? Mr. Lanfrey hints "No"; but 
Wurmser thought " Yes," for he warmly expressed his 
admiration for Napoleon ; and out of gratitude warned 
him, while he was at Bologna, of a plot the papal party 
had made to poison him — a warning which probably 
saved his life. 

The Pope, believing that Napoleon could not possibly 
escape final defeat at the hands of Austria, had broken 
their friendly compact. A crusade had been preached 
against the French, sacred processions paraded, and mira- 



170 NAPOLEON chap. 

cles worked. The bones of martyrs bled, images of the 
Virgin wept. Heaven was outspoken on the side of Rome 
beyond all doubt. Aroused by these means, the peasants 
flocked to the standard of the Pope ; and an army, formi- 
dable in numbers, had been raised. 

Leaving Serurier to receive the capitulation of Mantua, 
Napoleon hastened to Bologna, and organized a force of 
French, Italians, and Poles to operate against the papal 
troops. Despatching the greater part of his little army 
to Ancona, he advanced with about three thousand men 
into the States of the Church. Cardinal Busca with an 
army of mercenaries, fanatical peasants, and miscellaneous 
Italian recruits was intrenched on the banks of the Senio 
to dispute its passage. The French came marching up in 
the afternoon of a pleasant spring day ; and the Cardinal, 
with a solicitude which did honor to his conscience, sent a 
messenger, under flag of truce, to notify Napoleon that if 
he continued to advance, he would be fired upon. Greet- 
ing this as the joke of the campaign, the French became 
hilarious ; but Napoleon gravely returned a polite answer 
to the Cardinal, informing him that as the French had been 
marching all day, were tired, and did not wish to be shot 
at, they would stop. Accordingly, camp was struck for 
the night. Before morning, Lannes had taken the cav- 
alry, crossed the river above, and got in the Cardinal's 
rear. Day broke, and there was some fighting. In a short 
while the Cardinal fled, and the greater part of his motley 
army were prisoners. Advancing on Faenza, which had 
closed its gates and manned its ramparts, the French bat- 
tered their way in with cannon, and routed the defenders. 
Napoleon's policy with the Pope was not that of the Direc- 
tory; it was his own, and it Avas subtle and far-sighted. 



iin IMAM TLA 171 

Prisoners were kindly treated and released. Cardinals 
and influential priests were caressed. Papal officers 
recently captured were visited, soothed by conciliatory 
speech, assured that the French were liberators and de- 
sired only the welfare of a regenerated Italy — redeemed 
from papal thraldom and rusty feudalism. For the first 
time modern Italians heard a great man outlining the 
future of a united Italy. 

At Loretto were found the relics which made that place 
one of the holiest of shrines. The very house in which 
Mary, the mother of Jesus, had received the visit of Gabriel 
was at Loretto. Had you asked how came it there, the 
answer would have been that the angels carried it from 
Nazareth to Dalmatia to keep the Saracens from getting it. 
From Dalmatia the angels, for reasons equally good, had 
carried it to Loretto. Within this holy hut was a wooden 
image of Mary, old, blackened, crudely carved. The an- 
gels had carved it. In times of clerical distress this image 
of Mary was seen to shed tears. As there had been quite 
an access of clerical woe recently, in consequence of Napo- 
leon's brutal disregard of papal armies led by priests with 
crucifixes in their hands, the wooden Virgin had been 
weeping profusely. 

Napoleon had doubtless familiarized himself with the 
methods by which pagan priests had kept up their stu- 
pendous impostures, and he had a curiosity to see the old 
wooden doll which was worshipped by latter-day pagans 
at Loretto. He found a string of glass beads so arranged 
that they fell, one after another, from the inside, athwart 
the Virgin's eyes, and as she was kept at some distance 
from the devotees, and behind a glass case, the optical 
illusion was complete. Napoleon exposed the trick, and 



172 NAPOLEON chap. 

imprisoned the priests who had caused the recent tears to 
flow. 

To add to the sanctity of the shrine at Loretto, there 
was a porringer which had belonged to the Holy Family, 
and a bed-quilt which had belonged to Mary, the mother 
of Jesus. Thousands of devout Catholics prostrated them- 
selves every year before these relics, and countless were the 
rich offerings to the shrine. 

Napoleon took from the church pretty much all the 
treasure which the priests had not carried off; and the 
wooden Madonna was sent to Paris. In 1802 he restored 
it to the Pope, and it was put back in its old place in the 
Virgin's hut. 

Many of the French priests who had refused the oath 
of allegiance to the new order of things in France had 
taken refuge in the papal States. The Directory wished 
Napoleon to drive these men out of Italy. He not only 
refused to do that, but he gave them the benefit of his 
protection. In a proclamation to his troops he directed 
that the unfortunate exiles should be kindly treated ; and 
he compelled the Italian monasteries, which had indeed 
grown weary of these come-to-stay visitors, to receive 
them and supply all their wants. 

The breadth and depth of Napoleon's liberalism was 
also shown by the protection he gave to the Jews. These 
people had, at Ancona, been treated with mediseval bar- 
barity. Napoleon relieved their disabilities, putting them 
upon an exact political equality with other citizens. In 
favor of certain Mohammedans, who resided there, he 
adopted the same course. 

Capturing or dispersing the Pope's troops as he went, 
and winning by his clemency the good-will of the people, 



XIII MANTUA 173 

Napoleon drew near Rome. The Vatican was in dismay, 
and the Pontiff listened to those who advised peace. The 
treaty of Tolentino was soon agreed upon, and the papal 
power once again escaped that complete destruction which 
the Directory wished. A mere push then, an additional 
day's march, the capture of another priest-led mob, would 
have toppled the sovereignty which was at war with creed, 
sound policy, and common sense. It cost torrents of 
blood, later, to finish the work which Napoleon had almost 
completed then. 

By the treaty of Tolentino, February 19, 1797, the 
Pope lost $3,000,000 more by way of indemnity ; the 
legations of Bologna and Ferrara, together with the Ro- 
magna, were surrendered ; papal claims on Avignon and 
the Venaisson were released, and the murder of Basse- 
ville was to be formally disavowed. To his credit be it 
said that Napoleon demanded the suppression of the 
Inquisition ; to his discredit, that he allowed the priests 
to wheedle him into a waiver of the demand. 

" The Inquisition was formerly a bad thing, no doubt, 
but it is harmless now — merely a mild police institution. 
Pray let it be." Napoleon really was, or pretended to be, 
deceived by this assurance, and the Inquisition remained 
to purify faith with dungeon, living death in foul tombs, 
torture of mind and of body in Italy, in Spain, in South 
America, in the far Philippines. 

" Most Holy Father," wrote Bonaparte to the Pope ; 
" My Dear Son," wrote the Pope to Bonaparte ; and so 
they closed that lesson. 

Amid all the changes made and to be made in Italy 
there was one government Napoleon did not touch. This 
was the little republic of San Marino, perched upon the 



174 NAPOLEON chap, xm 

Apennines, where from its rain-drenched, wind-swept 
heights it had for a thousand years or more looked tran- 
quilly down upon troubled Italy. Governed by a mixed 
council of nobles, burgesses, and farmers, it was satisfied 
with itself, and asked only to be let alone. Now and 
then a pope had shown a disposition to reach out and seize 
the little republic, but it had always managed to elude the 
fatherly clutch. Napoleon respected the rights of San 
Marino, and offered to increase its territory. San Marino 
declined ; it had enough. More would bring trouble. 
Presenting it with four cannon as a token of his esteem, 
the great Napoleon got out of the sunshine of this Italian 
Diogenes, and left it in peace. In 1852 the Pope again 
hungered for San Marino ; but Napoleon III. interfered, 
and the smallest and oldest republic in the world was left 
to its independence in its mountain home. 



CHAPTER XIV 

npHE hope of Austria was now the Archduke Charles, 
who had so brilliantly forced the two French armies 
on the Rhine to retreat. He was a young man, younger 
even than Napoleon, being but twenty-five years of age. 
The Aulic Council at Vienna decided to pit youth against 
youth, and the Archduke was ordered to take chief com- 
mand in Italy. Aware of the fact that the Archduke was 
waiting for reenforcements from the army of the Rhine, 
Napoleon decided to take the initiative, and strike his 
enemy before the succors arrived. 

Massena was ordered up the Piave, to attack a separate 
division under Lusignan, while Napoleon moved against 
the Archduke on the Tagliamento. By forced marches, 
the French reached the river before they were expected 
(March 16, 1797). Making as if they meant to force 
a passage, they opened upon the Austrians, who awaited 
them upon the other side, and gave them a soldierly recep- 
tion. Then, as if he had suddenly changed his mind and 
meant to bivouac there. Napoleon drew back his troops, and 
preparations for a meal were made. The Archduke, de- 
ceived by this, drew off also, and returned to his tent. 
Suddenly the French sprang to arms, and dashed for the 
fords. Bernadotte's division led, and before the Aus- 
trians could get into line, the French were safely over, 

175 



176 NAPOLEON chap. 

and prepared for action. The Austrians fought, and 
fought well ; but they were outnumbered, as they had been 
outgeneralled, and they were beaten, losing prisoners and 
cannon. Massena, equally successful, had defeated and 
captured Lusignan, and was nearing the Pass of Tarvis, 
which leads into Germany from the Italian side. The 
Archduke hurried to the defence of this vital point, gath- 
ering in all his forces as he went. Taking position in 
front of the pass, he awaited Massena. By forced marches 
that intrepid soldier, " the pet child of victory," came up, 
battle was joined, and desperately contested. Massena 
won ; and the road to Vienna was cleared. The Arch- 
duke fell back to Villachi ; Massena waited at Tarvis, 
hoping to capture an Austrian "division which was advanc- 
ing to the pass, pursued by General Guieu. Not till the 
Austrians reached Tarvis did they perceive that they 
were enclosed, front and rear. Demoralized, they surren- 
dered after feeble resistance. 

Bernadotte and Serurier took Gradisca and its garrison, 
after the former had sacrificed several hundred men in 
reckless assault upon the ramparts. 

On March 28, 1797, Napoleon, with the main body of 
his army, passed into Corinthia by the Col de Tarvis. 
Pressing on, he reached Klagenfurth, from which he wrote 
to the retreating Archduke a letter suggesting peace, 
March 31, 1797. In reply, the Austrian commander stated 
that he had no authority to treat. The French continued 
a vigorous advance, and near Newmarket the Archduke, 
having received four battalions of the long-expected reen- 
forcements, stood and fought. He was beaten with a loss 
of three thousand men. He then asked for an armistice, 
which was refused. Napoleon would treat for peace, but 



xrr CAMPO FORMIO 177 

a truce lie would not grant. At Unzmark the Archduke 
was again worsted, and his retreat became almost a rout. 
On April 2, 1797, the advance guard of Napoleon was at 
Leoben, and the hills of Vienna were in sight from the 
outposts. Then came officers to ask a suspension of arms 
to treat for peace ; and the preliminaries of Leoben, after 
some delays, were signed. 

Many reasons have been suggested for Napoleon's 
course in tendering peace when he was apparently carry- 
ing all before him. It is said that he became alarmed at 
non-cooperation of the armies of the Rhine ; again, that 
he was discouraged by Joubert's want of success in the 
Tyrol; again, that he feared insurrection in his rear. 
Whatever the motive, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion 
that he made a huge mistake. The French on the Rhine 
had moved. Desaix was driving one Austrian army 
through the Black Forest ; Hoche had beaten and was 
about to surround the other. Austria's situation was 
desperate, and Vienna must have fallen. There are those 
who suggest that Napoleon hastened to suspend the war 
to deprive rival generals, Hoche especially, of a share in 
his glory. This is far-fetched, to say the least of it. 
Month after month he had done all in his power to get 
those rival generals to move. To the Directory he sent 
appeals, one after another, to order the Rhine armies to 
cross and cooperate. He even sent money from his own 
army chest ; and for fear the funds might lodge somewhere 
in Paris, he sent them directly to the Rhine. 

Bourrienne is not an authority friendly to Napoleon, 
and yet Bourrienne states that when Napoleon, after the 
truce, received the despatches announcing the progress of 
Desaix and Hoche, he was almost beside himself with cha- 



178 NAPOLEON chai>. 

grin. He even wanted to break the armistice, and his 
generals had to remonstrate. This testimony would seem 
to conclusively prove that Napoleon offered peace because 
he had lost hope in the cooperation which had been prom- 
ised him, and which was necessary to his triumph. Singly 
he was not able to hold disaffected Italy down, guard a 
long line of communications, and overthrow the Austrian 
Empire. The preliminaries of Leoben and the treaty of 
Campo Formio will always be subject of debate. The part 
which Venice was made to play — that of victim to the 
perfidy of Napoleon and the greed of Austria — aroused 
pity and indignation then, and has not ceased to be a 
favorite pivot for Napoleonic denunciation. Austria was 
very anxious to hold Lombardy. Napoleon was deter- 
mined to hold both Lombardy and Belgium. Venice 
was coldly thrown to Austria as compensation, because 
it was easier to seize upon decrepit Venetia than to meet 
another effort of the great Empire whose courage and re- 
sources seemed inexhaustible. Perhaps a clearer case of 
political hard-heartedness had not been seen since Russia, 
Prussia, and Austria cut up Poland and devoured it. 

But after this has been said, let the other side of the 
picture be viewed. Venice had undertaken to maintain 
neutrality, and had not maintained it. She had allowed 
both belligerents to take her towns, use her fortresses, 
eat her supplies, and pocket her money. Trying to please 
both, she pleased neither ; and they united to despoil 
her. 

Again, there was the quarrel between the city of Venice 
and the Venetian territories on the mainland. Venice 
had its Golden Book in which were written the names 
of her nobles. Aristocrats on the mainland craved the 



xiT CAMPO FORMIO 17» 

writing of their names in this Golden Book, and were 
refused that bliss ; hence heartburnings, which were 
referred to Napoleon. He advised the Venetian Senate 
to write the names in the book, and the Senate refused. 
Venice had long been governed by a few families, and 
these few had the customary obstinacy and prejudice of a 
caste. They treated Venetia simply as a fief — an estate 
belonging to the nobles. 

Again, republican leaven had been at work throughout 
Venetia, and Napoleon had advised the Senate to remodel 
its mediaeval institutions. Other states in Italy were 
yielding to the trend of the times, and Venice should 
do likewise. The Senate refused, until its consent came 
too late to avert its doom. 

Again, Napoleon had warned Venice that she was too 
weak to maintain neutrality, and had advised her to make 
an alliance with France. She had refused. 

Again, as Napoleon was about to set out to join his 
army for the invasion of Germany, he warned Venice to 
make no trouble in his rear. Things he might forgive were 
he in Italy, would be unpardonable if done while he was in 
Germany. Venetia could not, or would not, profit by 
this warning. While Napoleon was in Germany, tumults 
arose in the Venetian states, and the French in consider- 
able numbers were massacred. At Verona the outbreak 
was particularly savage, three hundred of the French 
have been butchered, including the sick in the hospitals. 
To leave nothing undone which could be done to give 
Napoleon the excuses he wanted, a French vessel, which, 
chased by two Austrian cruisers, had taken refuge in the 
harbor at Venice, was ordered to leave (according to the 
law of the port), and when she refused, was fired upon. 



180 NAPOLEON ohap. 

Her commander and others were killed, and some horrible 
details aggravated the offence. 

Napoleon may have had his intentions from the first 
to sacrifice Venetia. He may have been insincere in 
offering the weak old oligarchy the protection of liberal 
institutions and a French alliance. Letters of his, incon- 
sistent with each other, have been published. They 
prove his duplicity, his craft, his cunning, his callousness ; 
but this was long after Venice had provoked him. 

However cold-blooded Napoleon's treatment of Venice 
may have been, the European conscience could not have 
been as much shocked as royalist writers pretend, for 
after Napoleon's overthrow, Venice, which he had re- 
formed and regenerated, was thrown back as a victim to 
Austria. 



It was a brilliant gathering which surrounded Napo- 
leon and Josephine in the summer of 1797. Diplomats, 
statesmen, adventurers, soldiers, men of science and lit- 
erature, thronged Milan, and paid court at beautiful 
Montebello, the palatial country-seat where Napoleon had 
taken up his residence after the preliminaries of Leoben. 
Many subjects of importance needed his thought, his 
fertile resources, his ready hand. His republics needed 
guidance, the affairs of Genoa and Venice were unsettled, 
German princelets from along the Rhine had a natural 
curiosity to know just who they belonged to, and details 
of the coming treaty of Campo Formio needed to be worked 
out. It was a busy and a glorious season for Napoleon. 
He stood on the highest of pinnacles, his renown blazing 
to the uttermost parts of Europe ; and to him was drawn 



XIV CAMPO FORMIO 181 

the enthusiastic admiration which turns so warmly to 
heroes who are young. He had, as yet, made few enemies. 
All France was in raptures over him ; even Austrians 
admired him. The aristocrats, lay and clerical, in Italy 
doubtless wished him dead ; but the masses of the people 
looked up to him in wonder and esteem. Of Italian ex- 
traction, he spoke their language, knew their character, 
despised it, imperiously dominated it, and was therefore 
loved and obeyed. 

Miot de Melito, an unfavorable witness, declares that 
Napoleon already harbored designs for his own sover- 
eignty, and made no secret thereof. " Do you think I am 
doing all this for those rascally lawyers of the Directory ? " 
He may possibly have said so, but it is not probable. A 
man like Napoleon, meditating the seizure of power and 
the overturn of government, does not, as a rule, talk it to 
the Miots de Melito. Had Napoleon had any such clear- 
cut design as Miot records, he would not have allowed 
the wealth of Italy to roll through his army chest, while 
he himself was left poor. Like Caesar, he would have 
returned laden with spoil, to be used in furthering his 
plans. Napoleon doubtless took something for Napoleon 
out of the millions which he handled, but the amount was 
so inconsiderable that he keenly felt the burden of debt 
which Josephine had made in furnishing his modest home 
in Paris. And when the time did come to overturn the 
"rascally lawyers," he had to borrow the money he 
needed for that brief campaign. No ; the simple truth is 
that Napoleon indulged no sordid appetites in his Italian 
campaign. He made less money out of it than any of his 
lieutenants, than any of the army contractors, than any of 
the lucky spoilsmen who followed in his wake. If he had 



182 NAPOLEON caxr. 

harbored the designs attributed to him by Miot, it was 
obviously a mistake for him to have declined the $800,000 
in gold secretly offered him by the Duke of Modena. At 
St. Helena he uttered something which sounds like an 
admission that, in view of his subsequent necessities in 
Paris, he should have accepted the money. For wealth 
itself Napoleon had no longing — glory, power, fame, all 
these stood higher with him. The 7,000,000 francs Venice 
offered were as coolly refused as the smaller sum tendered 
by Modena, and the principality offered by the Emperor 
of Germany. 



The elections of 1797 were not favorable to the Direc- 
tory. Many royalists found seats in the Assembly, and 
the presiding officer of each legislative body was an oppo- 
nent to the government. Two of the Directors, Carnot 
and Barthelemy, joined the opposition. 

Openly and boldly, the malcontents, including royalists, 
constitutionals, and moderates, declared their purpose of 
upsetting the Directory. Barras, Rewbell, and Lare- 
velliere were united, and Barras still retained sufficient 
vigor to act promptly at a crisis. Seeing that bayonets 
were needed, he called on Hoche for aid. Hoche was 
willing enough, but he involved himself in a too hasty 
violation of law, and became useless. Then Barras turned 
to Napoleon, and Napoleon was ready. Angry with the 
legislative councils for having criticised his high-handed 
conduct in Italy, and feeling that for the present his own 
interest was linked with that of the Directory, he did not 
hesitate. He sent Auger eau to take command of the 
government forces at Paris, and Augereau did his work 



xiT CAMPO FORMIO 183 

with the directness of a bluff soldier. "I am come to 
kill the royalists," he announced by way of public ex- 
planation of his presence in town. " What a swagger- 
ing brigand is this ! " cried Rewbell when he looked up 
from the directorial chair at Augereau's stalwart, martial 
figure. Augereau marched thousands of troops into Paris 
at night, seized all the approaches to the Tuileries where 
the councils sat, and to the guard of the councils he 
called out through the closed gates, "Are you republi- 
cans?" and the gates opened. Augereau broke in upon 
the conspirators, seized with his own hand the royalist 
commander of the legislative guard, tore the epaulettes 
from his shoulders, and threw them in his face. Roughly 
handled like common criminals, the conspirators were 
carted off to prison. Carnot fled; Barth^lemy was 
arrested at the Luxembourg palace. With them fell 
Pichegru, the conqueror of Holland. While still in com- 
mand of the republican army, he had entered into treason- 
able relations with the royalists, and had agreed to use 
his republican troops to bring about a restoration of the 
monarchy. This plot, this treason, had not been known 
when Pichegru, returned from the army, had been elected 
to one of the councils and made its president. Moreau 
had captured the correspondence from the Austrians, and 
had concealed the facts. After Pichegru's arrest by 
Augereau, the secret of the captured despatches came 
to light. Moreau himself made the report, and the ques- 
tion which sprang to every lip was. Why did he not 
speak out before ? This universal and most natural query 
became the first cloud upon the career of the illustrious 
Moreau. As Napoleon tersely put it, "By not speaking 
earlier, he betrayed his country; by speaking when he 



184 NAPOLEON chap. 

did, lie struck a man who was already down." After 
having saved the government, as Augereau fancied he 
alone had done, that magnificent soldier's opinion of him- 
self began to soar. Why should he not become a direc- 
tor, turn statesman, and help rule the republic? Very 
influential people, among them Napoleon and all the Direc- 
tors, were able to give good reasons to the contrary, and 
Augereau was compelled to content himself with remain- 
ing a soldier. Although he bragged that he was a better 
man than Bonaparte, he yielded to the silent, invisible 
pressure of the little Corsican, and he went to take com- 
mand of the unemployed army of the Rhine. In a few 
months the same fine, Italian hand transferred him to the 
command of the tenth division in Perpignan, where he 
gradually, if not gracefully, disappeared from the political 
horizon. 

The negotiation for final peace between Austria and 
France continued to drag its slow length along. Diplo- 
mats on either side exhausted the skill of their trade, each 
trying to outwit the other. How many crooked things 
were done during those weary months, how many bribes 
were offered and taken, how many secrets were bought 
and sold, how much finesse was practised, how many lies 
were told, only a professional and experienced diplomatist 
would be competent to guess. Into all these wire-drawn 
subtleties of negotiation Napoleon threw a new element, 
— military abruptness, the gleam of the sword. Not that 
he lacked subtlety, for he was full of it. Not that he was 
unable to finesse, for he was an expert. Not that he 
scorned to lie, for he delighted in artistic deception. But 
on such points as these the veteran Cobentzel and the 
other old-time diplomats could meet him on something 



xiy CAMPO FORMIO 185 

like an equality. To throw in a new element altogether, 
to hide his perfect skill as a machinator under the brusque 
manners of a rude soldier, was to take the professionals at 
a disadvantage. Just as the Hungarian veteran had com- 
plained that Napoleon would not fight according to rule, 
Cobentzel and his band were now embarrassed to find that 
he would not treat by established precedent. Wearied 
with delays, indignant that they should threaten him with 
a renewal of the war, and determined to startle the anti- 
quated Austrian envoys into a decision, Napoleon is said 
to have sprung up from his seat, apparently in furious 
wrath, exclaiming, " Very well, then ! Let the war begin 
again, but remember ! I will shatter your monarchy in 
three months, as I now shatter this vase," dashing to 
the floor a precious vase which Catherine II. of Russia 
had given Cobentzel. 

This story, told by so many, is denied by about an 
equal number. Cobentzel himself contradicted it, but he 
makes an admission which almost amounts to the same 
thing. He says that Napoleon became irritated by the 
delays, worked himself into a passion, tossed off glass 
after glass of punch, became rude to the negotiators, flung 
out of the room, and required a good deal of pacification 
at the hands of his aides. Says Cobentzel : " He started 
up in a rage, poured out a flood of abuse, put on his hat 
in the conference room itself" (an awful thing to do!), 
" and left us. He behaved as if he had just escaped from 
a lunatic asylum." 

Between this Austrian admission and the Austrian 
denial the substantial difference is not great. Reading 
between Cobentzel's lines, one sees that the brutal young 
soldier ran over Austria's delicate old diplomat just as he 



186 NAPOLEON chap. 

had been running over a lot of Austria's delicate old 
generals. 

The next day after this violent scene, the treaty of 
Campo Formio was signed. By its terms Austria ceded 
Lombardy, Belgium, and the German principalities on the 
Rhine. It recognized the Italian republic ; the Cisalpine, 
composed of Lombardy, Modena, Ferrara ; the Romagna, 
Mantua, Massa-e-Carrara ; the Venetian territory, west 
of the Adige and the Valtelline. It also recognized the 
Ligurian republic, recently formed by Napoleon out of 
Genoa and its states. France kept the Ionian Isles, and 
the Venetian factories opposite on the mainland. To 
Austria was given the Italian lands eastward from the 
Adige. Within this concession was embraced the ven- 
erable city of Venice. 

In the treaty of Campo Formio, Napoleon insisted 
that Austria should liberate the prisoner of Olmutz, La- 
fayette, who had been lying in a dungeon since 1793. 

To regulate the redistribution of German territory, 
made necessary by the treaty, a congress was to be con- 
vened at Rastadt. It may as well be stated in this place 
that the congress met, remained in session a long while, 
and could not reach an agreement. Napoleon having 
gone to Egypt, Austria renewed the war, broke up the 
congress, and murdered the French envoys. 

The Directors were strongly opposed to the terms of 
the Campo Formio treaty, but they were powerless. Na- 
poleon disregarded their positive instructions, relying for 
his support upon the enthusiasm with which the French 
would hail peace. His calculations proved correct. The 
nation at large welcomed the treaty as gladly as they had 
done his victories. It seemed the final triumph and per- 



XIV CAMPO FORMIO 187 

manent establishment of the new order. Against so 
strong a current in Bonaparte's favor, the Directory did 
not venture to steer. 

Setting out for Paris, November 17, 179T, Napoleon 
passed through a portion of Switzerland, where he was en- 
couraging the democratic movement which led to the forma- 
tion of the Helvetian republic. At Geneva and Lausanne 
he was given popular and most hearty ovations. He put 
in appearance at Rastadt, where the congress was in ses- 
sion, and remained just long enough to exchange ratifica- 
tions of the Campo Formio treaty with Cobentzel ; and 
to hector, insult, and drive away Count Fersen, the old 
friend of Marie Antoinette. Count Fersen had come as 
Swedish envoy ; and to Napoleon his presence seemed 
improper, as perhaps it was. 



CHAPTER XV 

"ITILITARY critics agree that the Italian campaign was 
a masterpiece ; and many say that Napoleon himself 
never surpassed it. At no other time was he perhaps 
quite the man he was at that early period. He had his 
spurs to win, his fame to establish. Ambition, the thirst 
for glory, his youth, his intense activity of mind and body, 
the stimulus of deadly peril, formed a combination which 
did not quite exist again. To the last a tremendous 
worker, he probably never was on the rack quite as he was 
in this campaign. In Italy he did all the planning, and saw 
to all the execution. He marched with his troops night 
and day, fair weather and foul. He shared the dangers 
like a common soldier, pointing cannon, leading charges, 
checking retreat, taking great risks in reconnoitring. 
He went without food, sleep, or shelter for days at a time. 
Horses dropped under him, some from wounds, some from 
fatigue. He marched all night before the battle of Rivoli, 
directed his forces during the battle, galloped himself to 
bring up support at critical points ; and then, at two or 
three in the afternoon, when Alvinczy was beaten, he set 
out to the relief of Serurier, marched again all night, and 
again directed a battle — that of La Favorita. This was 
but one instance ; there were dozens of others, some even 
more remarkable. For Napoleon never seemed to tire : 
mind and body were like a machine. He was thin, looked 

188 




JOSEPHINE IN 1800 
From a pastel by P. P. Prud'hon 



CHAP. XT JOSEPHINE AT MILAN 189 

sickly, and indeed suffered from the skin disease caught 
from the dead cannoneer at Toulon ; but his muscles were 
of steel, his endurance phenomenal, his vitality inexhaus- 
tible. The impression he made upon one close observer 
at this period was condensed in the words, "the little 
tiger." 

Inexorably as he marched and fought his men, he as 
carefully looked after their proper treatment. He was 
tireless in his efforts to have them shod, clothed, fed as 
they should be ; when sick or wounded, he redoubled 
his attention. Oppressed as he was by work and respon- 
sibility, he found time to write letters of condolence to the 
bereaved, those who had lost husbands, sons, or nephews 
in his service. Quick to condemn and punish negligence, 
stupidity, or cowardice, he was as ready to recognize and 
reward vigilance, intelligence, and courage. He cashiered 
General Vallette in the field, but Rampon, Murat, Junot, 
Marmont, Bessieres, Lannes, and hundreds of others he 
picked out of the ranks and put in the lead. " I am 
ashamed of you. You no longer deserve to belong to 
the army. Let it be written on your colors, ' They no 
longer belong to the army of Italy.'" Thus in stern 
tones he spoke to Vallette's troops, who had done too 
much running as compared to their fighting. The sol- 
diers were in despair. Some groaned; some wept; all 
were ashamed. " Try us again. General. We have been 
misrepresented. Give us another chance. General ! " 
Napoleon softened, spoke as his matchless tact sug- 
gested, and in the battles that followed no troops fought 
better than these. 

Complete genius for war Napoleon displayed in the 
campaign : masterly plans, perfection of detail, penetra- 



190 NAPOLEON chap. 

tion of the enemy's plan, concealment of his own, swift 
marching, cautious manoeuvring, intrepidity in fighting, 
absolute self-possession, sound judgment, inflexible will- 
power, capacity to inspire his own army with confidence 
and the enemy with almost superstitious terror. ^ An 
incident occurred after the battle of Lonato, attested 
by Marmont and Joubert, which reads like fiction. 
Napoleon with twelve hundred men was at Lonato 
making arrangements for another battle. An Austrian 
column of four thousand, bewildered in the general 
confusion, strayed into the neighborhood, and were told 
by some peasants that only twelve hundred French 
were in the place. The Austrians advanced to capture 
this band and sent a summons. Napoleon ordered that 
the herald should be brought in blindfolded. When 
the bandage was removed, the herald found himself 
in the presence of Napoleon, around whom stood his 
brilliant staff. " What means this insolence ? Demand 
my surrender in the midst of my army ? Go tell your 
commander that I give him eight minutes to lay down 
his arms." And the Austrian commander had time to 
his credit when his surrender of his four thousand had 
been made. 

It was at this period that Napoleon developed his won- 
derful fascination of manner. As he could intimidate 
by frowns, harsh tones, fierce looks, and cutting words, 
he could charm with the sweetest of smiles, the kindest 
of glances, the most caressing words. If he wished to 

1 It was a curious remark Napoleon made at St. Helena, that his whole 
military career had taught him nothing about a battle which he did not 
know at the time he fought his first ; subsequent campaigns taught him 
no more than the first. 



XV JOSEPHINE AT MILAN 191 

please, he could, as a rule, do so ; if he wished to ter- 
rify, it was rarely he failed. Already there were hun- 
dreds of young officers who swore by him, lived for his 
praise, and were ready to die for him. Muiron had 
done so ; Lannes, Junot, Marmont, Bessieres, Berthier, 
Murat, were as ready. As to the army itself, Ctesar had 
never more completely the heart of the Tenth Legion 
than the young Napoleon that of the army of Italy. No 
higher reward did his soldiers crave than his words of 
praise. His proclamations intoxicated them like strong 
wine. They were ready to dare all, endure all, to 
please him, win his smile, wear his splendid tribute. " I 
was at ease ; the Thirty-second was there ; " and the de- 
lighted regiment embroidered the words on its flag. 
" The terrible Fifty-seventh " were proud to see on their 
banner that battle name given them by their "Little 
Corporal"; just as, at Toulon, he had kept the most ex- 
posed of the batteries filled with men by posting the 
words, "The Battery of those who are not afraid." 

Planning, executing, marching, fighting, organizing new 
states. Napoleon was still the ardent lover. Josephine 
he never neglected. Courier sped after courier, bearing 
short, hasty, passionate love-letters to Josephine. He was 
in all the stress and storm, often cold, drenched by wintry 
rains, pierced by wintry winds, hungry, overwhelmed with 
work and care, yet not a day did he forget his bride. She 
was lapped in luxury at Paris, — warmth, light, pleasure, 
joyous ease, and companionship about her ; and she laughed 
at the love-letters, thinking them wild, crude, extravagant. 
" Bonaparte is so queer ! " 

In June, 1796, Napoleon was made to believe that 
Josephine was in a fair way to become a mother. His 



192 NAPOLEON chap. 

raptures knew no bounds. The letter which he then 
wrote her is certainly the most ardently tender, furiously 
affectionate scrawl ever penned. It drives in upon the 
impartial reader the conviction that this strange man 
possessed the uxorious and paternal spirit in its most 
heroic form ; and that had he been fitly mated, his devel- 
oping character would have reached a perfect harmony 
and equilibrium. It was in him to have found exquisite 
enjoyment in home-life ; it was in him to have bent 
caressingly over wife and child, to have found at the fire- 
side repose and happiness. As it was, his marriage was 
one source of his ruin. In Josephine he found no loyalty, 
no sympathy of the higher sort, and she bore him no chil- 
dren. She froze his hot affection with that shallow amia- 
bility which smiled on him as it smiled on all the others. 
She outraged his best feelings by her infidelities. She 
destroyed his enthusiasm, his hopes, his ideal of pure and 
lofty womanhood. He waited on her too long for chil- 
dren. His character, undeveloped on that side, hardened 
into imperial lines, until he himself was the slave of 
political necessities. The second marriage, and the son 
he idolized, came too late. 

Napoleon, the lover-husband, who had quitted his bride 
in forty-eight hours after the marriage, repeatedly im- 
plored her to join him at headquarters. Josephine had no 
inclination to obey : Paris was too delightful. Upon 
various excuses she delayed, and it was not till July, 
1796, that she reached Italy. 

Arrived in Milan, she was rapturously welcomed by 
Napoleon, and found herself treated by the Italians almost 
as a queen. She was lodged in a palace, surrounded with 
luxury, and flattered by the attentions of thronging court- 



XV JOSEPHINE AT MILAN 193 

iers. She moved from place to place as the months passed 
on, shared some of the dangers of the campaign, and by 
her grace, amiability, and tact made many a conquest use* 
ful to her many-sided lord. One conquest she made for 
herself, and not for her lord. A certain officer named 
Hypolite Charles, attached to Leclerc's staff, was young, 
handsome, gallant, — such a contrast to the wan, wasted, 
ungainly, skin-diseased Napoleon ! Josephine looked 
upon Charles and found him pleasing. The husband, en- 
grossed by war and business, was often absent. Charles 
was not engrossed with war, was present, and was not 
a Joseph. Here was youth, inclination, opportunity — 
and the old result. Scandal ensued. Napoleon's sisters 
made shrill outcry, the husband heard the story, and 
Charles joined the absent. It was thought for a while that 
Napoleon would have him shot, but apparently there was 
some invincible reason to the contrary. He went to Paris 
and obtained a good position — rumor said by the influ- 
ence of Josephine. 

If Napoleon was imperious at school, a tyrant in his 
childhood, self-willed and indomitable when out of em- 
ployment and threatened with starvation, how were the 
Directors to curb him now ? Just as natural as it seemed 
to be for him to command when among soldiers, it was 
for him to treat king, duke, and pope as equals, lay down 
the law of national relations, and create new governments 
in Italy. He assumed the power as a matter of course, 
and his assumption of authority was nowhere questioned. 
" Bless me ! I was made that way," exclaimed Napoleon. 
" It is natural for me to command." 

The Directors would gladly have dismissed him, for they 
doubted, disliked, and feared him ; but they dared not face 



194 NAPOLEON chap. 

him and France on such an issue. He rode rough-shod 
over their policies and their instructions, and they could 
do nothing. They had thought of sending Kellermann, 
had actually appointed him to share the command ; Napo- 
leon flatly said the command could not be shared, and 
Kellermann had to go elsewhere. 

They sent General Clarke as agent to manage negotia- 
tions, treaties, and to supervise matters generally. Napo- 
leon said to Clarke, " If you have come here to obey me, 
well and good ; but if you think to hamper me, the sooner 
you pack up and leave, the better." Clarke found himself 
completely set aside and reduced to nothing. The Direc- 
tory itself, overawed by Napoleon's tone, wrote Clarke, 
in effect, that he must not oppose the imperious comman- 
der-in-chief. 

There were official commissioners in the field, Salicetti 
and others. How powerful and dreaded these commis- 
sioners had formerly been ! Had not Napoleon courted . 
them and their wives with all the haughty cajolery of a 
proud nature which stoops to conquer ? Now he would 
stoop no more ; he had conquered. Salicetti and com- 
pany did the stooping ; and when, at length, their doings 
displeased the conqueror of Italy, he ordered them off. 

The Milanese, historic Lombardy, was the first province 
which he fashioned into a republic. Here he met Count 
Melzi, almost the only man Italy could boast. Working 
with Melzi and others, the Transpadane republic was 
established — the child of Napoleon's brain and energy. 

Afterward as liberalism spread, and the papal yoke was 
thrown off, Bologna, Reggio, Ferrara, clamored for repub- 
lican institutions. The dream of Italian unity began to 
be a reality. 



I 



XV JOSEPHINE AT MILAN 195 

Modena caught the infection ; its miserly duke had 
already run away, carrying his treasure. He had failed 
to pay 500,000 francs of his fine ; and, seizing upon this 
pretext. Napoleon granted the petitions of the people, 
grouped Modena with the papal legations, and gave or- 
ganization under a liberal constitution to the Cispadane 
republic. At a later day the two republics were united 
into one, and became the Cisalpine. 

In the wake of the victorious army skulked the hungry 
civilian, the adventurer seeking gain, the vultures group- 
ing to the carcass. It was feast-day for the contractor, 
the speculator, the swindler, the robber, the thief. It 
threw Napoleon into rage to see himself surrounded by a 
horde of imitators, puny plunderers doing on a small 
scale, without risking battle, what he did in grand style, 
after a fair fight. Soldiers who brought scandal on the 
army by too notorious pillage he could shoot, and did 
shoot ; he resented the limitations of power which kept 
the civilian buccaneers from being shot. 

An indirect result of Napoleon's victories in Italy was 
the loss of Corsica to England. The rule of Britannia 
had not pleased the Corsicans, nor been of any special 
benefit to England. Toward the close of 1796 the 
islanders revolted, and the English withdrew. Corsica 
became again a province of France. 



CHAPTER XVI 

AN December 5, 1797, Napoleon returned to Paris. 
With studious eye for effect, he adopted that line of 
conduct most calculated, as he thought, to preserve his 
reputation and to inflame public curiosity. He was deter- 
mined not to stale his presence. Making no display, and 
avoiding commonplace demonstrations, he doffed his uni- 
form, put on the sober dress of a member of the Institute, 
to which he was elected in place of Carnot, screened him- 
self within the privacy of his home, and cultivated the 
society of scholars, authors, scientists, and non-combatants 
generally. When he went out, it was as a private citizen, 
his two-horse carriage unattended by aides or escort. He 
demurely attended the meetings of the Institute, and on 
public occasions was to be found in his place, in his class, 
among the savants, just as though he had set his mind now 
on literary matters and was going to write a book. His 
brother Joseph gave it out that Napoleon's ambition was 
to settle down and be quiet, to enjoy literature, friends, and, 
possibly, the luxuries of the office of Justice of the Peace. 
It must have been a queer sight to have seen the little 
Corsican dress-parading as a guileless man of letters ; it 
is very doubtful whether many were deceived by his exag- 
gerated modesty. Those who were in place and power, 
the men whom he would have to combat and overcome, 
were not for a moment duped. They suspected, dreaded, 

196 



CHAP. XVI EGtPT 197 

and watched him. Prepare for him they could not, for 
they had not the means. He had said nothing and done 
nothing which they had not indorsed ; with hearts full of 
repugnance, with faces more or less wry, they had sanc- 
tioned even when their instructions had been disobeyed. 
They could not seize him by brute force, or put him out 
of the way. They were too weak ; he too strong. He 
was the idol of soldiers and civilians alike ; the Directors 
were not the idols of anybody. They could not even have 
him poisoned, or stabbed, for he was on his guard against 
that very thing. Soon after his return to Paris he had 
received warning of a plot to poison him ; he had caused 
the bearer of the note to be accompanied by a magistrate 
to the house of the woman who had furnished the informa- 
tion, and she was found lying dead on the floor, her 
throat cut and her body mutilated. The would-be mur- 
derers had, doubtless, discovered her betrayal of them, 
and had in this manner taken vengeance and assured their 
own safety. After such an occurrence, Napoleon was not 
the man to be caught napping ; and it was noticed that at 
the official banquets to which he was invited he either ate 
nothing, or slightly lunched on wine and bread brought by 
one of his aides. 

The Directory gave him, in due time, a grand public 
reception at the Luxembourg, which was attended by im- 
mense numbers, and which was as imposing as the pomp 
of ceremony and the genuine enthusiasm of the people 
could make it. But the part played by the Directory and 
Talleyrand was theatrically overdone, and gave a tone of 
bombast and insincerity to the whole. 

What now must Napoleon do ? There was peace on the 
Continent; he was too young for a place in the Directory, 



198 NAPOLEON chap. 

and if he remained in Paris too long, France would forget 
him. This was the reasoning of Napoleon, the most im- 
patient of men. Evidently the reasoning was unsound ; 
it was dictated only by his feverish, constitutional need 
of action. There was no danger of his sinking out of 
notice or importance in France. There was the danger 
of his being identified with a party, but even this peril 
has been exaggerated. Astute and coldly calculating as 
he was, the party he would have chosen, had he seen fit to 
choose one at all, would probably have been the strongest, 
and political success comes to that in the long run. 

He had been too impatient in Corsica in his earlier 
struggles ; he had there alienated the wise and lovable 
Paoli, who wanted to be his friend, but could not sympa- 
thize with his too violent, too selfishly ambitious character. 
He had been too impatient to get on in France, and had 
been perilously near losing his head as a terrorist in the 
fall of Robespierre. Too anxious for social recognition 
and independent military command, he had fallen into 
the snares of Barras and the shady adventuress of whom 
the libertine Director was tired, and had rushed into a 
marriage which proved fatal to him as a man and a 
monarch. The same feverish haste was again upon him, 
and was to continue to be upon him all the days of his 
life, until his final premature rush from Elba was to lead 
him, through the bloody portals of Waterloo, to his prison 
on the bleak rock of St. Helena. 

How could a few months of quiet in Paris have tar- 
nished his fame ? Had he not seen the heart of liberalism 
throughout all Europe warm to Paoli, — the time having 
come, — although the patriot exile had been sitting quietly 
at English firesides for twenty-one years ? 



XTi EGYPT 199 

Who in France was likely to outstrip Napoleon in one 
year, two years, ten years ? Hoche was dead, Moreau in 
disgrace, Jourdan under the cloud of defeat, Augereau 
on the shelf, Carnot an exile, Pichegru banished. In 
the Directory there was not a man who could give him 
the slightest concern. 

But to Napoleon it seemed absolutely necessary that 
he must be actively engaged — publicly, and as master. 
He could not get the law changed so that he could be- 
come a director ; he could not quite risk an attack in 
the Directory. That pear was not yet ripe. He had 
wished to be sent to Rastadt to straighten matters there, 
but the Directory chose another man. Napoleon, resent- 
ing the slight, threatened, once too often, to resign. A 
Director (some say Rewbell, others Larevelliere) handed 
him a pen, with the challenge, " Write it, General ! " 
Moulins interposed, and Napoleon beat a retreat, check- 
mated for the time. 

Apparently, as a last resort, the exp'edition to Egypt 
was planned, both Napoleon and the Directory cordially 
agreeing upon one thing — that it was best for him to 
leave France for a while. 

The attack on Egypt suggested itself naturally enough 
as a flank movement against England. The idea did not 
originate with Napoleon ; it was familiar to the foreign 
policy of France, and had been urged upon the Bourbon 
kings repeatedly. With his partiality for the East, whose 
vague, mysterious grandeurs and infinite possibilities never 
ceased to fascinate him, the oft-rejected plan became to 
Napoleon a welcome diversion. Veiling his design under 
the pretence of a direct attack upon England, he bent all 
his energies to the preparations for the invasion of Egypt. 



200 NAPOLEON chap. 

Nominally belonging to Turkey, tlie ancient ally of France, 
Egypt was in fact ruled by the Mamelukes, a military 
caste which had, in course of time, evolved from the 
personal body-guard of Saladin. The reign of the Mame- 
lukes was harsh and despotic ; they paid little respect to 
religion, and none to law ; and Napoleon thought that 
by telling the Sultan he would overthrow the Mamelukes 
in the Sultan's interest, while he assured the subject 
Egyptians that he came to liberate them from Mameluke 
tyranny, he would deceive both Sultan and Egyptians. As 
it happened, he deceived neither. 

It was a part of the scheme agreed on by Napoleon 
and the Directors that Talleyrand should go to Constan- 
tinople and gain over the Sultan to neutrality, if to noth- 
ing more favorable. With this understanding, Napoleon 
gathered up the best generals, the best troops, the best 
vessels, swept the magazines, cleaned out the directorial 
treasury, and even borrowed from the Institute its best 
savants, and weighed anchor at Toulon, May 18, 1798, 
for Alexandria. The wily Talleyrand did not go to Tur- 
key, had apparently never intended to go, and that part 
of the plan failed from the beginning. English diplomats 
took possession of the Sultanic mind; and what they saw, 
the heir of the Prophet saw. To save herself from a 
movement which threatened her in the East, Great Britain 
warmed to the infidel, forgot crusading vows and tra- 
ditions, guided infidel counsels, supplied infidel needs, 
and aimed infidel guns. So that from the day he set 
sail. Napoleon had against him all the resources of Eng- 
land, all the power of Ottoman arms, all the strength of 
Mameluke resistance, all the discouragement of native 
Egyptian hostility. 




NAPOLEON 

From the painting by Paul Delaroche entitled " General Buonaparte 
crossing the Alps" 



xTi EGYPT 201 

To reach Egypt at all it was necessary that he should 
run the extreme risk of encountering the British fleet. 
By the victory England had won over the Spanish allies 
of France off Cape St. Vincent (February, 1797), and 
over the Dutch at Camperdown (October, 1797), France 
was left without naval support. In a sea-fight between 
herself and England, all the advantage would have been 
with her foe. Conscious of this, Nelson did his utmost 
to come upon Napoleon during his voyage, and the two 
fleets passed each other once in the night ; but Napoleon's 
rare luck favored him, and Nelson missed his prey. 

The capture of Malta was a part of Napoleon's plan. 
This island fortress belonged to the Knights of St. 
John, a belated remnant of the ancient orders of chiv- 
alry, created for the purpose of retrieving Palestine 
from the infidel. These soldiers of the Cross had fallen 
upon evil days and ways ; their armor very rusty in- 
deed, their banners covered with dust, their spurs very, 
very cold. In a world which had seen a new dis- 
pensation come, the knights were dismally, somewhat 
ludicrously, out of place. Asked, What are you doing 
here ? What do you intend to do ? What is your ex- 
cuse for not being dead? the knights would have been 
stricken dumb. No intelligible reply was possible. 
Camped there upon a place of strength and beauty, a 
fortress girdled by the Mediterranean, they were, in 
theory, Christendom's outpost against the infidel. Chris- 
tendom, in theory, was yet intent upon raising up cham- 
pions who would tread in the steps of Godfrey, of Tan- 
cred, of Richard Coeur de Lion. In theory, Christendom 
was never going to rest till the tomb of Jesus had been 
redeemed, till the shadow of Mahomet should be lifted 



202 NAPOLEON chap. 

from the Holy Land. And so it happened that the 
knights had stopped at Malta, long ages ago, resting 
upon their arms, until such time as Christendom should 
rouse itself and send reenforcement. The time had never 
come. The knights, they waited ; but the crusader 
of Europe had gone home to stay. Once and again, as 
the centuries crept slowly by, the Church had turned 
in its sleep and mumbled something about the tomb of 
Christ ; but the Church was only talking in its sleep, and 
the knights had continued to wait. A king, now and then, 
suddenly awakened to the fact that he was a very great 
scoundrel, must finally die, would probably go to hell, and 
therefore needed to redeem himself at the expense of the 
infidel, swore a great oath to renew the crusades ; but 
such vows bore no fruit ; the spasm of remorse passed 
over, and the knights continued to wait. Really, it was 
not so hard upon them. They had a royal home, a royal 
treasury, a royal standing and a sacred. They lived a 
pleasant life ; they doffed iron armor, and wore silks, 
velvets, and other precious stuffs more congenial to the 
flesh- than metallic plates. They came to love such things 
as good eating, joyous entertainments, the smiles and the 
favors of fair ladies, and the sweetness of doing nothing 
generally. 

Malta being defended by such decadent champions, it 
was easily captured by such a man as Napoleon Bonaparte. 
There was, perhaps, bribery ; there was, certainly, col- 
lusion, and the resistance offered was but nominal. 
General Caffarelli probably voiced the general senti- 
ment when he said, looking around at the vast strength 
of the fortress, "It is lucky we had some one to let 
us in." 



xTi EGYPT 203 

Leaving a garrison under Vaubois to hold the place, 
Napoleon again set sail for Egypt. 

Nelson was flying hither and thither, on the keenest of 
hunts, hoping to pounce upon the crowded vessels of the 
French, and to sink them. Storms, fog, bad guessing, and 
Napoleonic luck fought against the English, and they 
missed the quarry completely. Napoleon hastily landed 
near Alexandria, July 2, 1798, marched upon the city, and 
easily took it. After a short rest, the army set out by 
the shortest route for Cairo. The sun was terribly hot, 
the desert a burning torment, water it was almost im- 
possible to supply, food failed, and the skirmishes of the 
enemy from behind sandhills, rocks, or scraggy bushes 
harassed the march, cutting off every straggler. Bitterly 
the soldiers complained, contrasting this torrid wilderness 
to the fertile beauty of Italian plains. Even the gen- 
erals became disheartened, indignant, almost mutinous. 
Men like Murat and Lannes dashed their plumed and 
braided hats on the ground, trampled them, and damned 
the day that had brought them to this barren Hades. 

The common soldiers bitterly recalled Napoleon's prom- 
ise that each of them should make enough out of the 
campaign to buy seven acres of land. Was this desert a 
fair sample of the land they were to get ? If so, why the 
limit of seven acres ? 

The trying march was over at last, the Nile was reached, 
and then came the relief of battle and easy victory. The 
Mamelukes were great horsemen, the best in the world, 
perhaps ; but they had no infantry and no artillery worth 
the name. In the hands of Napoleon they were children. 
Battle with Mamelukes was target practice, during which 
French marksmen, in hollow square, shot out of their sad- 



204 NAPOLEON chap. 

dies the simple-minded Mamelukes, who fancied that they 
could do everything with horses. 

In all of the battles which took place, the tactics of the 
French were the same : " Form square : savants and asses 
to the centre." Then, while the baggage, the learned 
men, and the long-eared donkeys rested securely within 
the lines, a steady fire of muskety and cannon emptied 
the saddles of the heroes of the desert. 

To see the Mamelukes come thundering on to the at- 
tack, was magnificent ; to see them drop in the sand with- 
out having been able to reach the French, was pitiful. 

After a skirmish at Shebreis, in which the Mamelukes 
were driven off without any difficulty (July 13), came 
the encounter known as the Battle of the Pyramids 
(July 21), chiefly remembered now as that in which 
Napoleon dramatically exclaimed to his troops as they 
were being made ready for the struggle, " Soldiers, from 
yonder pyramids forty centuries look down upon you ! " 
The telescope had revealed to him the fact that the artil- 
lery of the enemy consisted of guns taken from their 
flotilla on the river. These guns were not on carriages, 
like field artillery, and therefore they could not be moved 
at will during battle. This suggested to him a change 
in his own dispositions. A portion of his army being 
left to deal with the stationary artillery and the infantry 
which manned the feeble, sand-bank intrenchments, he 
directed the other to march out of the range of the guns, 
for the purpose of throwing against the Mameluke horse 
liis own cavalry, supported by infantry and artillery. 
Murad Bey, the commander-in-chief of the opposing 
army, seized the moment when this change was being 
made by Napoleon to launch against him a mass of 



XVI EGYPT 206 

seven thousand Mameluke horse. This mighty host 
struck the division of Desaix when it was in motion, 
and therefore unprepared for cavalry. For an instant 
the French, at least of that column, were in peril. So 
quickly, however, did the veterans of Desaix form squares, 
so quickly did Napoleon see the point of danger and send 
relief, that the battle was never in real doubt. The camp 
of the Arabs was stormed, the Mameluke cavalry slaugh- 
tered ; and, inflicting a loss computed at ten thousand on 
the enemy, the French had but a score or two killed and 
one hundred and twenty wounded. 

The Mameluke power was shattered by the Battle of 
the Pyramids, and the conquest of Egypt was practically 
achieved. For some days Frenchmen fished the Nile for 
dead Mamelukes, to secure the wealth which those war- 
riors carried on their persons. 

Arrived in Cairo, Napoleon did his utmost to assure the 
permanence of his triumph. He caused the religion, the 
laws, the customs of the country, to be respected. Pur- 
suing his policy of trying to deceive the Mahometans, he 
proclaimed that the French were the true champions of 
the Prophet ; that they had chastised the Pope, and con- 
quered the Knights of Malta ; therefore the people of 
Egypt should be convinced that they were the enemies 
of the Christians. 

" We are the true Mussulmans ! " read the proclama- 
tion. " Did we not destroy the Pope because he had 
preached a crusade against the Mahometans? Did we 
not destroy the Knights of Malta because they said that 
God had directed them to fight the followers of Ma- 
homet?" 

He cultivated the influential men of the country, and 



206 NAPOLEON chap. 

encouraged the belief that he himself might become a 
Mussulman. In truth, Napoleon admired Mahomet 
greatly, and he never shrank from saying so, then or 
afterward. In the classification of the books of his 
private library, made in his own writing, he grouped 
under the same head the Bible, the Koran, the Vedas, 
and Mythology, and Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws. These 
he enumerated in the class of Politics and Morals. He re- 
minded his soldiers that the Roman legions had respected 
all religions. He did not remind them that Roman rulers 
had considered all religions as equally useful for purposes 
of government ; nor that Roman philosophers had regarded 
them all as equally sons and daughters of that primeval 
pair, Fear and Fraud — fear of the unknown, and the 
fraud which practises upon it. 

Napoleon found that Mahometan priests were as eager 
to convert him as Christian priests had been to capture 
Constantine and Clovis. In the one case as in the other, 
the priests were willing to compromise the creed to gain 
the convert. Napoleon did not quite join the faithful 
himself, but he approved of General Menou's apostasy, 
and he ostentatiously observed the Mahometan festivals. 

Both Napoleon and Bourrienne denied, as others assert, 
that he went into the mosque, sat cross-legged on the 
cushion amid the faithful, muttered Koran verses as they 
did, and rolled head and body about as a good Mussulman 
should. If he did not do so it was because he thought, as 
a matter of policy, that the act would not compensate him 
for the trouble and the ridicule. He afterward did just 
about that much for the Christian religion ; and faith had 
no more to do with his conduct in the one case than in the 
Other. 



XVI EGYPT 207 

As he went farther with the Jacobins than it was pleas- 
ant to remember, so he probably went farther with the 
Mahometans than he cared to admit ; for he certainly pre- 
vailed upon the priesthood to do that which was forbidden 
by the Koran unless he was a convert. They officially 
directed the people to obey him and pay him tribute. 
Nor is there any doubt that the leaders among the priests 
liked him well enough, personally, to watch over his per- 
sonal safety. General Kleber, who succeeded him in com- 
mand, neglected to pay the chiefs those attentions Napoleon 
had lavished upon them, and in turn they neglected him. 
To this, perhaps, his assassination was due. 

Regarding Egypt as a colony to be developed, rather 
than a conquest to be despoiled. Napoleon devoted every 
attention to civil affairs. He reorganized the administra- 
tion, conforming as nearly as possible to established cus- 
toms. He set up a printing-press, established foundries 
and manufactories, planned storage dams and canals to 
add to the cultivable soil, organized an institute, and 
started a newspaper. He sent his savants. abroad to dig, 
delve, excavate, explore, map the present and decipher the 
past of Egypt. Napoleon himself used his leisure in vis- 
iting historic places and making plans for the material 
progress of the benighted land. He discovered traces of 
the ancient canal connecting the Nile with the Red Sea, 
and formed the resolution of reopening it. He himself 
located the lines for new canals. He crossed the Red Sea 
ford which the Israelites used in fleeing from bondage, 
and, staying too long on the opposite shore, was caught 
by the rising tide, and came near meeting the fate of 
Pharaoh and his host. More self-possessed than Pharaoh, 
Napoleon halted when he realized his peril, caused his 



208 NAPOLEON chap. 

escort to form a circle around him, and each to ride out- 
ward. Those who found themselves going into deeper 
water drew back, followed those who had found fordable 
places ; and, by this simple manoeuvre, he deprived needy 
Christendom of a new text and a modern instance. 

While on the farther shore Napoleon visited the Wells 
of Moses, and heard the petition of the monks of Sinai. 
At their request, he confirmed their privileges, and put 
his name to the charters which bore the signature of 
Saladin. 

A terrible blow fell upon him in August when Nelson 
destroyed the French fleet in the famous battle of the 
Nile. There is doubt as to who was to blame for this 
calamity. Napoleon cast it upon Brueys, the French 
admiral who lost the battle ; and Brueys, killed in the 
action, could not be heard in reply. He had drawn up 
his ships in semicircle so close to the shore that he con- 
sidered himself comparatively safe, protected as he was 
by land batteries at the doubtful end of his line. 

But Nelson, on the waters, was what Bonaparte was on 
land — the boldest of planners and the most desperate of 
fighters. He came up at sunset, and did not wait till 
morning, as Brueys expected. He went right to work, 
reconnoitred his enemy, conceived the idea of turning his 
line, getting in behind with some of his ships, and thus 
putting the French between two fires. The manoeuvre was 
difficult and dangerous, but succeeded. Nelson rammed 
some of his ships in on the land side of the amazed Bru- 
eys, who had made no preparations for such a manoeuvre. 
Caught between two terrible fires, Brueys was a lost 
man from the beginning. It was a night battle, awful 
beyond the power of description. When it ended next 



XVI EGYPT 209 

day, the English had practically obliterated the French 
fleet; Napoleon was cut off from Europe; When the 
news reached him, he was stunned, almost crushed ; but 
rallying immediately, he wrote to Kleber, " The English 
will compel us to do greater things in Egypt than we had 
intended." 

Desaix conquered Upper Egypt ; organized resistance 
to the invaders ceased for the time, and from the cata- 
racts to the sea Napoleon held the valley down. The 
administration began to work smoothly, taxes seemed 
lighter because more equitably distributed, and the vari- 
ous enterprises Napoleon had set on foot began to show 
some life. He enrolled natives in his army, and formed 
a body of Mamelukes which afterward appeared so pic- 
turesquely in France. Two young Mamelukes, Roustan 
and Ibrahim, given him by one of the pachas, became his 
personal attendants, and served him faithfully till his 
power was broken in 1814. 

The ruin of the fleet was not the only grief of Napo- 
leon in the months which followed. Junot had acted the 
part of the candid friend, and had revealed to Napoleon 
the secret of Josephine's infidelities. Captain Hypolite 
Charles had reappeared in the absence of the husband, 
and was now living with the wife at Malmaison. So 
openly was this connection kept up that the Director, 
Gohier, a friend of Josephine, advised her to divorce 
Napoleon and marry Charles. The first shock of Junot's 
revelation threw Napoleon into a paroxism of wrath, then 
into a stupor of despair and dull disgust with everything. 
Then, by a reaction, natural, perhaps, to a man of his 
temperament, he threw himself into libertine excesses. 
Prior to this period his morals, considering the times and 



210 NAPOLEON chap, xvi 

the temptations, had been remarkably pure. Henceforth 
he was occasionally to give himself a license which scan- 
dalized even the French officers. Scorning subterfuge 
and concealment, he became as bold as any born king, a 
rake by divine right, in the shamelessness of his amours. 
He appeared in public at Cairo with Madame Foures, his 
mistress, riding in the carriage by his side ; and if Bour- 
rienne tells the truth on Napoleon, and Carlyle tells no lie 
on Peter the Great, the one was about as obscene as the 
other while the lustful impulse prevailed. 



CHAPTER XVII 

/CAREFULLY as Napoleon had cultivated the native au- 
thorities, deferred to prejudice and custom, and main- 
tained discipline, native opposition to French rule seems 
to have been intense. A revolt in Cairo took him by 
surprise. It had been preached from the minaret by the 
Muezzins in their daily calls to prayer. It broke out 
with sudden fury, and many Frenchmen were slaugh- 
tered in Cairo and the surrounding villages. Napoleon 
quelled it promptly and with awful severity. The insur- 
rection, coming as it did upon the heels of all his attempts 
at conciliation, filled him with indignant resentment, and, 
in his retaliation, he left nothing undone to strike terror 
to the Arab soul. Insurgents were shot or beheaded 
without mercy. Donkey trains bearing sacks were driven 
to the public square, and the sacks being untied, human 
heads rolled out upon the ground — a ghastly warning to 
the on-looking natives. Such is war ; such is conquest. 
The conquered must be tamed. Upon this principle 
acted the man of no religion, Napoleon, in Egypt, and 
the Christian soldier, Havelock, in Hindustan. The 
Christian Englishmen who put down the Indian mutiny 
were as deaf to humanity as was the Deist who quelled 
the revolt in Cairo. Like all the cruelty whose injury 
society really feels, the crime is in the system, not the 

211 



212 NAPOLEON chap. 

individual. War is war; and as long as Christendom 
must have war to work out the mysterious ways of God, 
we must be content with the thorns as well as the fruits. 
If it be a part of the white man's burden to exterminate 
black and brown and yellow races to clear the way for the 
thing we call Christian civilization, Napoleon's course in 
Egypt was temperate and humane. Upon all his deeds a 
blessing might be asked by the preachers who incited the 
soldiers of America, Great Britain, Germany, Russia, in 
the wars of the year 1900 ; and the chaplains who went, 
on good salaries, to pray for those who shot down Fili- 
pinos, Chinamen, or even South African Boers could 
just as easily have given pious sanction to the murders- 
in-mass committed by Bonaparte. 

Inspired by the result of the battle of the Nile, Eng- 
land, Turkey, the Mamelukes, and the Arabs made great 
preparations to drive Napoleon out of Egypt. A Turk- 
ish army was to be sent from Rhodes ; Achmet, Pacha of 
Acre, surnamed Djezzar, the Butcher, was raising forces 
in Syria, and Commodore Sir Sidney Smith was cruis- 
ing on the coast ready to help Turks, Mamelukes, and 
Arabs against the French. Sir Sidney had been a 
political prisoner in Paris, had recently made his escape, 
and had been assisted in so doing by Napoleon's old 
schoolmate, Phelippeaux. Following Sir Sidney to the 
East, Phelippeaux, a royalist, was now at hand eager to 
oppose the republican army of Napoleon, and capable of 
rendering the Turks valuable service. There is no evi- 
dence that he was actuated by personal hatred of Napo- 
leon. They had not liked each other at school, and had 
kicked each other's shins under the table ; but, as men, 
they had taken different sides as a matter of policy or 



XVII THE SIEGE OF ACRE 213 

-principle, and it was this which now arrayed them against 
each other. 

Napoleon's invariable rule being to anticipate his enemy, 
he now marched into Syria to crush Djezzar before -the 
Turkish army from Rhodes could arrive. Leaving Desaix, 
Lanusse, and other lieutenants to hold Egypt, he set out 
with the main army February 11, 1799. El Arish was 
taken February 20, 1799, and Gaza followed. Jaffa, the 
ancient Joppa, came next (March 6), and its name will al- 
ways be associated with a horrible occurrence. Summoned 
to surrender, the Arabs had beheaded the French mes- 
senger. The place was stormed, and the troops gave way 
to unbridled license and butchery. The massacre went 
on so long and was so hideous that Napoleon grew sick 
of it, and sent his step-son, Eugene, and another aide, 
Croisier, to put a stop to it. He meant, as he claimed, 
that they were sent to save the non-combatants, — old 
men, women, and children. He did not mean them to 
save soldiers, for, by the benign rules of war, all defenders 
of a place taken by assault could be slain. Misunderstand- 
ing Napoleon, or not knowing the benign rules, Eugene and 
Croisier accepted the surrender of three or four thousand 
Arab warriors, and brought them toward headquarters. 
As soon as Napoleon, walking in front of his tent, saw 
these prisoners coming, he exclaimed, in tones of grief : 
" Why do they bring those men to me ? What am I to 
do with them ? " Eugene and Croisier were severely 
reprimanded, and he again asked : " What am I to do 
with these men ? Why did you bring them here ? " 

Under the alleged necessity of the case, want of food 
to feed them, or vessels to send them away, a council 
of war unanimously decided that they should be shot. 



214 NAPOLEON chap. 

With great reluctance, and after delaying until the 
murmurs of the troops became mutinous, Napoleon 
yielded, and the prisoners were marched to the beach 
and massacred. That this was a horribly cruel deed 
no one can deny ; but the barbarity was in the situation 
and the system, not the individual. Napoleon himself was 
neither blood-thirsty nor inhumane. The last thing he 
had done before quitting France had been to denounce the 
cruelty of the authorities in dealing with emigres who 
were non-combatants. His proclamation, which really 
invited soldiers to disobey a cruel law, closed with the 
ringing statement, " The soldier who signs a death- 
warrant against a person incapable of bearing arms is 
a coward ! " 

In passing judgment upon Napoleon, we must adopt 
some standard of comparison ; we must know what mili- 
tary precedents have been, and what the present practice 
is. Three days after the battle of CuUoden the Duke of 
Cumberland, being informed that the field was strewn 
with wounded Highlanders who still lived, — through 
rain and sun and the agony of undressed wounds, — 
marched his royal person and his royal army back to 
the field and, in cold blood, butchered every man who 
lay there. A barn, near the battle-field, was full of 
wounded Scotchmen ; the royal Duke set it on fire, 
and all within were burned to death. 

During the conquest of Algiers, in 1830, a French com- 
mander, a royalist, came upon a multitude of Arabs — 
men, women, children — who had taken refuge in a cave. 
He made a fire at the cavern's mouth and smoked them 
all to death. 

In the year 1900, Russians, Germans, and other Chris- 



xvn THE SIEGE OF ACRE 216 

tians invaded China to punish the heathen for barbari- 
ties practised upon Christian missionaries. A German 
emperor (Christian, of course) said, " Give no quar- 
ter." Germans and Russians killed everything that was 
Chinese — men and vv^omen and children. Armed or 
not armed, working in fields or idle, walking in streets 
or standing still, giving cause or giving none, the hea- 
then were shot and bayoneted and sabred and clubbed, 
until the streets were choked with dead Chinese, the 
rivers were putrid with dead Chinese, the very waters 
of the ocean stank with dead Chinese. Prisoners were 
made to dig their own graves, were then shot, tumbled 
into the hole, and other prisoners made to fill the grave. 
Girls and matrons were outraged in the presence of 
brothers, sons, husbands, fathers ; and were then shot, or 
stabbed to death with swords or bayonets. 

Were it not for examples such as these, the reader might 
feel inclined to agree with the anti-Bonaparte biographers 
who say that the Jaffa massacre was the blackest in the 
annals of civilized warfare. 

Rid of his prisoners. Napoleon moved forward on the 
Syrian coast and laid siege to St. Jean d'Acre. The 
town had strong, high walls, behind which were desper- 
ate defenders. The lesson from Jaffa had taught the 
Arab that it was death to surrender. To him, then, it 
was a stern necessity to conquer or die. The English 
were there to help. Sir Sidney Smith furnished guns, 
men to serve them, and skilled engineers. 

Napoleon was not properly equipped for the siege, for 
his battering train, on its way in transports, was stupidly 
lost by the captain in charge. Sir Sidney took it and 
appropriated it to the defence. In vain Napoleon lin- 



216 NAPOLEON chap. 

ge.red till days grew into weeks, weeks into months. He 
was completely baffled. There were many sorties, many 
assaults, dreadful loss of life, reckless deeds of courage done 
on both sides. Once, twice, the French breached the walls, 
made good their assault, and entered the town, once reach- 
ing Djezzar's very palace. It was all in vain. Every 
house was a fortress, every street an ambuscade, every Arab 
a hero, — the very women frantically screaming "Fight! " 

With bitterness in his soul. Napoleon turned away : 
"that miserable hole has thwarted my destiny!" And 
he never ceased to ring the changes on the subject. Had 
he taken Acre, his next step would have been to the Eu- 
phrates; hordes of Asiatics would have flocked to his 
banner ; the empire of Alexander would have risen again 
under his touch ; India would have been his booty ; Con- 
stantinople his prize ; and then, from the rear, he would 
have trodden Europe into submission. He saw all this 
on the other side of Acre, or thought he saw it. But the 
town stood, and the chateau in Spain fell. 

Once he had been drawn from the siege to go toward 
Nazareth to the aid of Kleber, who was encompassed by 
an army outnumbering his own by ten to one. As Napo- 
leon came within sight, he could see a tumultuous host of 
cavalry enveloping a small force of infantry. The throngs 
of horsemen surged and charged, wheeled and turned, like 
a tossing sea. In the midst was an island, a volcano 
belching fire. The tossing sea was the Mameluke cav- 
alry ; the island in the midst of it was Kleber. Forming 
so that his line, added to Kleber's, would envelop the 
enemy, Napoleon advanced ; and great was the rout and 
the slaughter of the foe. No organized force was left 
afield either in Syria or Egypt. 



xvii THE SIEGE OF ACRE 217 

Now that the siege of Acre was abandoned, the army 
must be got back to Cairo, and the country laid waste to 
prevent Djezzar from harassing the retreat. What could 
not be moved, must be destroyed. The plague, brought 
from Damietta by Kleber's corps, had stricken down 
almost as many as had perished in the siege. To move 
the wounded and the sick was a heavy undertaking, but 
it was done. On the night of May 20, 1799, Napoleon 
began his retreat. A terrible retreat it was, over burning 
sands, under brazen skies, amid stifling dust, maddening 
thirst — and over all the dread shadow of the plague. In 
their selfish fears, the French became callous to the suffer- 
ings of the wounded and the sick. The weak, the helpless, 
were left to die in the desert. Every hamlet was fired, the 
fields laden with harvest were in flames, desolation spread 
far and wide. " The whole country was in a blaze." 

Napoleon doggedly kept his course, full of dumb rage 
— seeing all, feeling all, powerless in the midst of its hor- 
rors. At Tentoura he roused himself to a final effort to 
save the sick and the wounded. "Let every man dis- 
mount ; let every horse, mule, camel, and litter be given 
to the disabled; let the able go on foot." The order so 
written, despatched to Berthier, and made known through 
the camp. Vigogne, groom to the chief, came to ask, 
"What horse shall I reserve for you. General?" 

It was the touch that caused an explosion. Napoleon 
struck the man with his whip ! " Off, you rascal ! Every 
one on foot, I the first. Did you not hear the order ? " 

The hungry desert swallowed horses and men. The 
heavy guns were abandoned. The army pressed on in 
sullen grief, anger, despondency. The chief trudged 
heavily forward, in grim silence. 



218 NAPOLEON chap. 

On May 24, the French were at Jaffa again. Here 
the hospitals were full of the plague-stricken and the 
wounded. Napoleon visited these men, spoke encourag- 
ing words to them, and, according to Savary, touched one 
of the victims of the plague in order to inspire confidence 
— the disease being one with whose spread imagination is 
said to have much to do. Bourrienne denies this story; 
but according to a report written by Monsieur d'Ause,' 
administrator of the army of the East, and dated May 8, 
1829, Napoleon not only touched the afflicted, but helped 
to lift one of them off the floor. Substantially to the same 
effect is the testimony of the chief surgeon of the army, 
Desgenettes. Bourrienne also denies that the sick were 
taken away by the retreating French. Monsieur d'Ause 
reports that the wounded and the sick were put on board 
seven vessels (he names the vessels), and sent by sea to 
Damietta. This statement is corroborated by Grobert, 
Commissioner of War, who gives the names of the officers 
placed in charge of the removal. A few of the plague- 
stricken were so hopelessly ill that Napoleon requested 
the surgeon to administer opium. It would put the poor 
creatures out of their misery, and prevent them from fall- 
ing into the hands of the enemy. Desgenettes made the 
noble reply which Napoleon himself quoted admiringly, 
"My duty is to cure, not to kill." But Napoleon's sug- 
gestion was really humane ; as he says, any man in the 
condition of these hopeless, pain-racked invalids would 
choose the painless sleep of opium rather than the pro- 
longed agony of the disease. 

In the year 1900 the Europeans, beleaguered by the 
Chinese in Tien-Tsin, adopted the view of Napoleon. 
They killed their own wounded to prevent them from fall- 



xTii THE SIEGE OF ACRE 219 

ing into the hands of the heathen. According to reports 
published throughout Christendom and not contradicted, 
Admiral Seymour of the British Navy issued orders to 
that effect. And when the barbarities which the Chris- 
tians inflicted upon the heathen became worse than death, 
Chiiiamen did as Seymour had done — killed their own 
friends to escape the torture. 

Napoleon not insisting on poison, the few invalids who 
could not be moved were left alive, and several of these 
yet breathed when Sir Sidney Smith took possession of 
Jaffa. 

After another dreadful desert-march, in which Napoleon 
tramped in the sand at the head of his troops, the army 
reached Cairo, June 14, 1799. With all his art. Napoleon 
only partially made the impression that he had returned 
victorious. During his absence there had been local 
revolts, soon repressed, and he found the country com- 
paratively quiet. It was probably a relief to him when 
news came that the expected Turkish army had arrived at 
Aboukir. In open fight on fair field he could wipe out 
the shame of Acre. With all his celerity of decision, 
movement, and concentration, he was at Aboukir on July 
25, 1799, where the Turkish army had landed. But for 
an accident, he would have taken it by surprise. In the 
battle which followed, the Turks were annihilated. Out 
of a force of twelve thousand scarce a man escaped. Its 
commander, Mustapha, was taken prisoner by Murat, after 
he had fired his pistol in the Frenchman's face, wounding 
him in the head. A blow of Murat's sabre almost sev- 
ered the Turk's hand. Carried before Napoleon, the latter 
generously said, " I will report to the Sultan how bravely 
you have fought." — " You may save yourself the trouble," 



220 NAPOLEON chap, xvn 

the proud Turk answered ; " my master knows me better 
than you can." 

The aid, counsel, and presence of Sir Sidney Smith had 
not availed the enemy at Aboukir as at Acre. It was 
with difficulty that he escaped to his ships. As to Phe- 
lippeaux, he had been stricken by the plague and was 
mortally ill, or already dead. 

On his return to Alexandria, Napoleon sent a flag of 
truce to Sir Sidney, proposing an exchange of prisoners. 
During the negotiations, the English commodore sent 
Napoleon a file of English newspapers and a copy of the 
Frankfort Grazette. Throughout the night Napoleon did 
not sleep ; he was devouring the contents of these papers. 
The story which they told him was enough to drive sleep 
away. 

It is possible that Talleyrand, by way of Tripoli, may 
have been corresponding with Napoleon ; and it seems 
that a letter from Joseph Bonaparte had also reached him ; 
but Bourrienne, his private secretary, positively denies 
that he knew of conditions in France prior to the battle 
of Aboukir. Although it is possible he may have received 
letters which his private secretary knew nothing about, it 
is not probable. It would seem, therefore, that his knowl- 
edge of the situation in Europe was derived from the news- 
papers sent him by Sir Sidney Smith. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

TXTITH the first coming of the armies of revolutionary 
France to Italy, the establishment of republics in 
the peninsula, and. the talk of Italian unity, even Rome 
and Naples began to move in their shrouds. Probably 
two systems of government more utterly wretched than 
those of the Pope and the Neapolitan Bourbons never 
existed. While changes for the better were taking place 
in the immediate neighborhood of these misruled states, 
it was natural that certain elements at Rome and Naples 
should begin to hope for reforms. 

The support of the Pope and of the Bourbons was the 
ignorance of the lowest orders and the fanaticism of the 
priests. The middle classes, the educated, and even many 
of the nobles favored more liberal principles. In Decem- 
ber, 1797, the democratic faction at Rome came into colli- 
sion with the papal mob ; and the papal troops worsted 
in the riot, the democKits sought shelter at the French 
embassy, Joseph Bonaparte being at that time the min- 
ister of France. The papal faction, pursuing their advan- 
tage, violated the privilege of the French ministry, and 
General Duphot, a member of the embassy, was killed. 
This was the second time a diplomatic agent of France 
had been slain by the Pope's partisans in Rome. Joseph 
Bonaparte left the city, and General Berthier marched in at 

221 



222 NAPOLEON chap. 

the head of a French army. The Pope was removed, and 
finally sent to Valence, where he died in 1799. His tem- 
poral power having been overthrown, the liberals of Rome, 
including many clericals who were disgusted with the 
papal management of political affairs, held a great meet- 
ing in the forum, renounced the authority of the Pope, 
planted a liberty tree in front of the Capitol, and declared 
the Roman republic, February 15, 1798. 

In the spring of 1798 the democratic cantons in Switz- 
erland had risen against the aristocracy of Berne, had 
called in the French, and on April 12, 1798, the Helvetic 
republic had been proclaimed. 

This continued and successful advance of republican 
principles profoundly alarmed the courts and kings of 
Europe. Great Britain, having failed in her efforts to 
make favorable terms of peace with the French Directory, 
and having gained immense prestige from the battle of 
the Nile, organized a second great coalition in the 
autumn of 1798. Russia, Turkey, Naples, and England 
combined their efforts to crush republican France. 

A Neapolitan army, led by the Austrian general, Mack, 
marched upon Rome for the purpose of restoring the tem- 
poral power of the Pope. Its strength was overwhelming, 
the French retreated, and Ferdinand of Naples made his 
triumphant entrance into Rome in November, 1798. The 
liberty tree was thrown down, an immense cross set up in 
its place, many liberals put to death in spite of Ferdi- 
nand's pledge to the contrary, and a few Jews baptized 
in the Tiber. The French, having left a garrison' in the 
castle of St. Angelo, General Mack issued a written 
threat to shoot one of the sick French soldiers in the hos- 
pital for every shot fired from the castle. 



XVIII THE RETURN TO FRANCE 223 

Ferdinand gave the credit of his victory to " the most 
miraculous St. Januarius." To the King of Piedmont, who 
had urged Ferdinand to encourage the peasants to assas- 
sinate the French, he wrote that the Neapolitans, guided 
by Mack, had " proclaimed to Europe, from the summit 
of the Capitol, that the time of the kings had come." 

We do not know of any incident which more fully illus- 
trates the meaning of the gigantic efforts made by Europe 
against France and Napoleon than this. Ferdinand called 
to the Pope to return, to sweep away all reforms, to re- 
store all abuses, to become master again of life, liberty, 
and property : " The time of the kings has come ! " And 
back of the Bourbon king, back of these efforts of Naples 
to inaugf urate the return of the Old Order and all its mon- 
strous wrongs, was Nelson and the English government. 

If "the most miraculous St. Januarius" had joined Fer- 
dinand in his Roman campaign, the saint soon wearied of 
it, for the conquest was lost as soon as made. The Nea- 
politan forces were badly handled, and the favorites of 
the saint fell easy prey to the heretic French. King 
Ferdinand, losing faith in Januarius, fled, the French 
reentered Rome, the republic was set up again ; and 
Championnet, the French general, invaded Neapolitan ter- 
ritory. In December, 1798, the royal family of Naples 
took refuge on Nelson's ship, and soon sailed for Sicily. 
The republicans of Naples rose, opened communications 
with the French, who entered the city, January 23, 1799 ; 
and the Parthenopean republic was proclaimed. Repre- 
sentative government took the place of intolerant priest- 
rule and feudalism. Against this new order of things the 
clergy preached a crusade. The ignorant peasants of the 
rural districts and the lowest rabble of the city flew to 



224 NAPOLEON chap. 

arms, and civil war in its worst form was soon raging 
between the two factions — that which favored and that 
which opposed the republic. 

In the meantime the forces of the great coalition were 
getting under way. A Russian army, led by the cele- 
brated Suwarow, w^as on the march toward Italy. Austria 
had recuperated her strength, and the Archduke Charles 
beat the French, under Jourdan, at the battle of Stockach, 
March 25, 1799. On the 28th of April of the same year, as 
the French envoys to the Congress of Rastadt were leav- 
ing that place, they were assailed by Austrian hussars, 
two of them killed, and the third left for dead. The 
Archduke Charles commenced an investigation of this 
crime, but was stopped by the Austrian Cabinet. The 
evidence which he collected was spirited away, and has 
never since been found. 

On April 5, 1799, the army of Italy, under Scherer, 
was defeated by the Austrians, who recovered at one blow 
Italian territory almost to Milan. In June, Massena was 
beaten by the Archduke Charles at Zurich, and fell back 
to a strong position a few miles from that city. 

Suwarow having reached Italy in April, 1799, began 
a career of victory which would have been followed by 
momentous results had not Austrian jealousy marred the 
campaign. His impetuous valor overwhelmed Scherer; 
and, by the time Moreau was put in command of the 
French, the army was too much of a wreck for even that 
able officer to stand the onset of the Russians. General 
Macdonald, hastening to Moreau's aid, was not quite quick 
enough. The dauntless and vigilant old Russian com- 
mander made a dash at Macdonald, struck him at the 
Trebbia, and well-nigh destroyed him, June 18, 1799. 



xviii THE RETURN TO FRANCE 225 

Southern Italy rose against the French. Cardinal 
Ruffo, at the head of an army of peasants, ravaged Cala- 
bria and Apulia. On the 15th of June, 1799, this army, 
assisted by the lazzeroni of Naples, attacked the republi- 
can forces in the suburbs of that city, and for five days 
there was a carnival of massacre and outrage. On the 
19th the Cardinal proposed a truce. The republicans 
who remained in possession of the forts agreed ; negotia- 
tions followed, and on the 23d terms of peace were 
signed by Ruffo on behalf of the King of Naples, and 
guaranteed by the representatives of Russia and Great 
Britain. It was agreed that the republicans should march 
out with the honors of war, that their persons and prop- 
erty should be respected, and that they should have the 
choice of remaining, unmolested at home, or of being 
safely landed at Toulon. On the faith of this treaty the 
democrats yielded up the forts, and ceased all resistance. 
At this juncture. Nelson sailed into the harbor and an- 
nulled the treaty. A reign of terror followed. 

The Queen of Naples was the sister of Marie Antoinette, 
— a violent, cruel, profligate woman. She and her friend. 
Lady Hamilton, wife of the English minister and mistress 
of Lord Nelson, hounded on the avengers of the republican 
revolt, and Naples became a slaughter-pen. Perhaps the 
blackest of all the black deeds done in that revel of re- 
venge was the murder of Admiral Carraccioli. 

This man was a prince by birth, a member of one of 
the noblest Italian houses ; his character was as lofty as 
his birth, and he was seventy years old. He had joined 
the republicans, and had commanded their naval forces. 
Involved in the failure of his cause, he was entitled to the 
protection of the treaty of capitulation. 



226 NAPOLEON chap. 

Nelson, returning from his Victory of the Nile, and in- 
flated with pride and political rancor, annulled the terms 
v/hich Cardinal Ruffo had accepted — doing so over the 
Cardinal's protest, be it said to his honor. The republi- 
can garrisons of the castles were delivered by Nelson to 
the vengeance of their enemies. As to Prince Carraccioli, 
Nelson himself took charge of his case. The gray-haired 
man, who had honorably served his country for forty years, 
was brought on board the English vessel, with hands tied 
behind him, at nine o'clock in the forenoon. By ten his 
trial had begun ; in two hours it was ended. Sentenced 
to death immediately, he was, at five o'clock in the after- 
noon of the same day, hanged at the yard-arm, his body 
cut down at sunset, and thrown into the sea. In vain 
the old man had pleaded that the president of the court- 
martial was his personal enemy. In vain he had asked for 
time, a rehearing, a chance to get witnesses. Nelson was 
unrelenting. Then the victim of this cold-blooded mur- 
der begged that he might be shot. " I am an old man, 
sir. I leave no family to grieve for me, and therefore 
cannot be supposed to be very anxious to live ; but the 
disgrace of being hanged is dreadful to me ! " And again 
Nelson refused all concession. 

Lady Hamilton, Nelson's mistress, looked on with un- 
concealed satisfaction as the prince-republican was choked 
to death with a rope ; and if ever Nelson felt a pang be- 
cause of his shocking inhumanity, it has escaped the 
record. 

Who has not had his ears deafened by royalist diatribes 
concerning the murder of the Duke d'Enghien ? And 
how silent are the same roj^alist authors concerning the 
murder of the Prince Carraccioli! 



XVIII THE EETURN TO FRANCE 227 

The closer the facts of history are studied and com- 
pared, the less certain the reader will be that Napoleon 
Bonaparte was a whit worse in any respect than the 
average public man of his time. 



From the newspapers which Napoleon read at Alex- 
andria during the night of July 25, 1799, he first 
learned the full extent of the disasters which had be- 
fallen France in his absence. 

" Great heavens, the fools have lost Italy ! I must re- 
turn to France ! " 

In the East his work was done. He had crushed organ- 
ized resistance. From the cataracts to the sea all was 
quietude. True, he had not conquered Syria, but he had 
broken Djezzar's strength, and destroyed the relieving 
army of Turks. What remained ? What more had he 
to do in Egypt ? Was he, when France was in such dire 
distress, to stay at Cairo running the newspaper, making 
pencils, supervising canals and schools, and dawdling 
along the Nile as local governor ? 

In France itself there was no division of sentiment on 
the subject. All felt that the best soldier of the Republic 
was needed at home. " Where is Bonaparte ? " was the 
cry throughout the country. The need for him was 
felt in Italy as well as France, on the Rhine as on the 
Seine. 

Even the Directory realized the necessity for the 
presence of the one Frenchman who could restore courage, 
inspire confidence, assure victory. They despatched a 
special messenger to call him home (September, 1799). 
This courier did not reach Egypt, and the order of recall 



228 NAPOLEON chap 

was revoked; but the fact that it was issued, proves that 
Napoleon, in returning to France, obeyed an impulse which 
even his enemies shared. 

Hastily and secretly making the necessary arrange- 
ments, and taking with him a chosen few of his soldiers 
and his savants. Napoleon embarked in four small vessels, 
August 23, 1799, and next morning made sail for France. 

In the army left behind there was a wail of despair, 
a burst of wrath. Napoleon's name was cursed, — the 
traitor, the deserter, the coward! This was very natural, 
and very unjust. Kleber himself, to whom Napoleon had 
delegated the chief command, was as indignant as the 
rest. In bitter, unmeasured terms he denounced Bonaparte 
in letters to the Directory — despatches which, when 
opened, were opened by Bonaparte, First Consul. Kleber 
had grossly exaggerated the difficulties of his situation, 
and soon gave proof of that fact. He was in no real 
danger. When other armies were thrown against him, 
he gloriously defeated them, and held his ground. 

Uncontrollable circumstances, the continued hostility of 
England, the unforeseen inability of Napoleon to throw suc- 
cors into Egypt, alone defeated his plans, finally. Never 
did a man strive harder to send relief to a lieutenant. 
There is something positively pathetic in the strenuous 
and fruitless efforts made by Napoleon to triumph over 
the incompetence of his naval commanders, and to compel 
them to exhibit enterprise, courage, and zeal in the relief 
of Egypt. It was all in vain. " I cannot create men," 
he said sadly. He certainly never was able to find 
effective aid in his navy, and Egypt was finally lost, in 
spite of all he could do. 

That he was correct in his judgment in attaching so 



XTiii THE RETURN TO FRANCE 229 

much importance to the conquest of Egypt, subsequent 
events have proved. , In seizing upon the exhaustless 
granary of the East, the enormously important midway 
station on the road to India, his was the conception of a 
far-sighted statesman. It was his fate to teach the world, 
England especially, the vital importance of Malta and of 
Egypt, and to lose both. 



T 



CHAPTER XIX 

HE seas were infested with hostile ships, and a more 



i 
perilous voyage than Napoleon's from Egypt few men ] 

ever risked. His little sailing vessels had but one element 
of security — their insignificanc;e. They could hope to 
slip by where larger ships would be sighted ; and they ; 
could retreat into shoal water where men-of-war could not 
follow. Napoleon had with him some four or five hun- : 
dred picked troops and a few cannon ; his plan was to 
run ashore on the African coast, and make his way over- 
land, if he should find his escape cut off on the ocean by 
English ships. Keeping close to the shore, he made 
tedious progress against contrary winds, and did not 
arrive off Corsica till the last days of September, 1799. 
He had not intended to land on his native soil, but the 
adverse gales made it necessary to put into the harbor of 
Ajaccio. Sending ashore for fruit and the latest journals, 
he sat up all night on board reading. He now learned] 
that the battle of Novi had been fought, and Joubertj 
killed. 

The presence of Napoleon in the harbor of Ajaccjoj 
created a sensation on shore, and the people thronged the 
streets and the quays, eager for a sight of the hero of Italy! 
and of Egypt. His victories in the East were known, forj 
he himself had dictated the reports, and had not weakened! 
them with any dashes of modesty. Around his name,] 

230 



CHAP. XIX THE REMOVAL OF THE COUNCILS 231 

therefore, had formed a halo, and even those Corsicans who 
had scorned him when feeble, admired him now that he 
was strong. Yielding to popular pressure, Napoleon 
landed. His reception was enthusiastic. The square was 
filled with shouting multitudes, the windows and the roofs 
crowded with the curious, everybody wanting to catch 
sight of the wondrous little man who had so quickly 
become the first soldier of the world. Crowds of admir- 
ing islanders remembered that they were his cousins. 
The number of god-children laid to him was immense. 
His old nurse liobbled to him, hugged him, gave him a 
blessing, and a bottle of goat's milk. 

He walked St. Charles Street, into the little square, and 
into the old Bonaparte home, which the English troops 
had used as a barrack. He visited the country-seat, the 
grotto of Milleli, all the old familiar scenes. He showed 
his staff, with some pride, the estates of his family ; and 
to the tenants and the herdsmen he gave cattle and land. 
The soldiers of the garrison, drawn up to receive him, 
were in a wretched condition ; they had received no pay 
for more than a year. Napoleon gave them $8000, all he 
had, saving necessary travelling expenses. To his nurse 
he gave a vineyard and a house in Ajaccio. 

The Corsicans tell the story that during the time when 
the young Lieutenant Bonaparte was trying to revolu- 
tionize the island, a priest, standing at the window of a 
house overlooking the street, aimed a gun at the little 
Jacobin's head. Napoleon, ever watchful, saw the move- 
ment just in time to dodge. The bullet struck the wall, 
and Napoleon scurried off. 

This priest, having remained in Ajaccio, and the situ- 
ation having undergone a change, was very uncomfort- 



232 NAPOLEON chap. 

able ; for Napoleon now had it in his power to make 
his old enemy do the dodging. But he bore no malice. 
He oifered the embarrassed priest his hand, made a joke 
of the shot out of the window, and put the good man 
quite at his ease. 

It was while attending a ball given in his honor in Ajac- 
cio that Admiral Ganteaume sent word that the wind had 
changed, and the voyage could be resumed. Hurriedly 
bidding adieu to friends, he quitted Corsica for the last 
time. 

On October 8, 1799, the four vessels entered the roads 
of P'rejus, and immediately upon its becoming known that 
Napoleon was on board, the water was covered with the 
boats of hundreds crowding to meet him. It was in this 
spontaneous rush of the people to greet the returning hero 
that the quarantine law was violated. The joy of the 
people was unbounded. They rang the bells, they filled 
the streets with shouting multitudes, they hailed him as 
the deliverer of France. A king in the best of Bourbon 
days had never drawn a warmer welcome. On his way 
from the coast he met with a prolonged ovation. At 
Lyons it was as though Napoleon had already become the 
ruler of France. 

General Marbot, late commander of Paris, now pass- 
ing through Lyons on his way to Italy, was somewhat 
scandalized and offended to see that Bonaparte was treated 
like a sovereign. Says his son in his Memoirs : — 

" The houses were all illuminated, and decorated with 
flags, fireworks were being let off; our carriage could 
hardly make its way through the crowd. People were 
dancing in the open spaces, and the air rang with cries of : 
' Hurrah for Bonaparte ! He will save the country ! '" 



XII THE REMOVAL OF THE COUNCILS 233 

The hotel keeper had given to Napoleon the rooms for 
which General Marbot had spoken, and Napoleon was in 
them. Learning how General Marbot had been treated, 
Napoleon invited him to come and share the rooms com- 
rade-like. Marbot went to another hotel, rather in a huff, 
it would seem; and Napoleon, determined not to make an 
enemy out of such an occurrence, went on foot and at once 
to apologize and express his regrets to General Marbot in 
his rooms at the other hotel. As he passed along the 
street he was followed by a cheering crowd. 

" General Marbot," says his son, " was so shocked at the 
manner in which the people of Lyons were running after 
Napoleon, as though he were already king, that the journey 
to Italy was resumed as speedily as possible." 

Napoleon's route led him through Valence, where there 
was not only the miscellaneous crowd to cheer him, but 
some true and tried personal friends. For example, there 
was old Mademoiselle Bou, who had credited him for 
board. Napoleon greeted her affectionately and made her 
some valuable presents, which are now to be seen in the 
museum of the town. Indeed, the news, flashed to all 
parts of France, " Bonaparte has come ! " created a kind 
of universal transport. One deputy, Baudin by name, 
died of joy. Chancellor Pasquier relates that he was at 
the theatre one evening in Paris, when he saw two very 
pretty women, sitting in the box next to him, receive a 
message. They rose in excitement and hurried away. 
These very pretty women, as Pasquier learned, were the 
sisters of Bonaparte. A courier had brought the news 
that their brother had landed at Frejus. Beranger says 
in his autobiography : " I was sitting in our reading room 
with thirty or forty others, when suddenly the news was 



234 NAPOLEON chap. 

brought in that Bonaparte had returned from Egypt. 
At the words every man in the room started to his feet, 
and burst into one long shout of joy ! " 

By the signal telegraph of that day, the news had flown 
to the capital, and in a short while carriages were rumbling 
along the road out of Paris toward Lyons, bearing relatives , 
and friends to meet the returning hero. One of these 
lumbering vehicles bore the uneasy Josephine. At Lyons, 
Napoleon, suspicious of political foes perhaps, changed his 
course, and hastened toward Paris by a different road. 
Would-be assassins, if there were any, as well as faithful 
friends, would fix their plans for nothing. 

When Napoleon got down from his carriage before his 
house in the street which was called, in compliment to 
him, the street of Victory, there was no wife, no relative, 
no friend to greet him. His home was a dismal picture 
of darkness, silence, desertion ; and it chilled him with a 
painful shock which he never ceased to remember. The 
anxious Josephine, the faithless wife, had gone to meet 
him, to weep away her sins on his breast, had missed him 
because of his change of route ; and Napoleon, not know- 
ing this, believed she had fled his home to escape his just . 
anger. Bitter days and nights this eminently human, 
Bonaparte had 'known ; bitter days and nights he was to ,^ 
know again ; but it may be doubted whether any of them 
gave to him a bitterer cup to drink than this of his return., 
from Egypt. 

Josephine came posting back as fast as she could, worn 
out with fear and fatigue. Napoleon refused to see her. 
Locked in his room, he paced the floor, his mind in a 
tempest of wrath, grief, mortification, wounded love. The 
guilty wife grovelled at the door, assaulting the barriers 



XIX THE REMOVAL OF THE COUNCILS 235 

with sobs, plaintive cries, soft entreaties. Her friends, 
Madame Tallien, the Director Gohier, her children, Eugene 
and Hortense, and some of Napoleon's friends, besieged 
the infuriated husband, appealing to his pride, his gener- 
osity, his self-interest, his fondness for the children, — in 
short, using every conceivable inducement, — and at 
ength Napoleon, worn out and softened, allowed Eugene 
and Hortense to put Josephine into his arms. 

Bourrienne relates that many years afterward, strolling 
along the boulevard with Napoleon, he felt the Emperor's 
hand suddenly close on his arm with spasmodic grip. A 
carriage had just passed, and within it Napoleon had rec- 
ognized Hypolite Charles, Josephine's old-time paramour. 
That this coxcomb still lived, is proof enough that 
Napoleon the Great scorned personal revenge. 

While the hope of the Bonaparte family was in the 
East, its interest had not been neglected in France. 
Joseph had been established in state at Paris (town house, 
country house, etc.) and had cultivated influential men of 
all parties. Lucien had been elected in Corsica as deputy 
to the Council of Five Hundred. Bold, and gifted with 
eloquence, he had become a power in the council, and had 
Seen elected its president. Josephine herself had been 
L ■'^ective, so splendid had been her establishment, so 
■l arming her tact and gracious ways. Therefore, when 
p e returning soldier cast his eye over the political field, 
" lere was much to give him satisfaction. He was com- 
mitted to no party ; he was weighed down by no record ; 
he was held in no rigid grooves. Towering above all 
other heads, he alone could draw strength from all parties. 
As he himself said, in his march to power he was march- 
ing with the nation. Barras admits that all France was 



236 NAPOLEON cha». 

rushing to him as to a new existence. That he would 
become the ruler was expected, was desired ; it was only 
a question of when and how. The almost unanimous voice 
of the people would have made him Director. Details 
alone caused differences of opinion. Should the consti- 
tution be set aside ? Should Bonaparte be one of five 
Directors ? Or should he be vested with a virtual dicta- 
torship ? Should the powers of government be distributed, 
as under the Directory, or should they be concentrated ? 
It was on details like these that differences arose ; but as 
to the importance of having the benefit of Napoleon's ser- 
vices, the great mass of Frenchmen were agreed. True, 
the brilliant triumphs of Mass^na around Zurich, and the 
overthrow of the English and Russians in Holland, by 
Brune, had saved the Republic from the pressing dangers 
of foreign invasion ; but the foreign invasion was not the 
only cause of disquiet in France. The root of the evil 
was thought to be weakness of the government. The 
constitution had been violated by the Directors in Fruc- 
tidor when Augereau had broken in upon the councils 
and arrested so many members. Three Directors, it will 
be remembered, had driven out two, Carnot and Barthe- 
lemy. Afterward, in Floreal (May 11, 1798), the elections 
had been set aside to get rid of objectionable members. ' 
In each of these cases the vacancies made by force had 
been filled by the victors. 

Then, finally, the reaction had become too strong, and 
in Prairial (June 18, 1799) the Fructidorians had in 
turn been beaten, and the Directory changed by the 
putting in of Sieyes, Gohier, Moulins, and Roger-Ducos. 

People grew weary of so many convulsions, so much 
uncertainty, so much vacillation, so much disorder. Be- 



XXX THE REMOVAL OF THE COUNCILS 237 

sides, the finances were in hopeless confusion. National 
bankruptcy virtually existed, and a forced loan of 
100,000,000 francs, the law of hostages, and the vexa- 
tious manner in which the new Sunday law was enforced 
gave offence in all classes. Barras had managed to keep 
his place in the Directory, but not his power. Sieyes 
had entered the Directory, but wished to overthrow it. 
Even had there been no Bonaparte to plan a change, 
a change was inevitable. Sieyes had said, " France 
needs a head and a sword." With Sieyes present, only 
the sword was lacking, and he had tried to find one. 
Joubert was chosen, but got killed. Bernadotte was 
mentioned, but he would not take the risk. Moreau 
was sounded, but would not agree to act. Nevertheless, 
it was but a question of time when the man and the op- 
portunity would meet. It might possibly have happened 
that Sieyes with his new constitution and his new execu- 
tive would have saved the Republic. Better men, coming 
to the front and casting out the scum which had floated 
to the top of the revolutionary current, might have 
established the Republic on a solid basis, and saved the 
world from the hideous revel of blood and carnage 
which marked the era of Napoleon. No one can tell. 
It is easy to say that the directorial regime had failed ; 
it is no less easy to say that a change could have been 
made without rushing into imperialism. Republics, being 
merely human, cannot be perfected in a day ; and there is 
some injustice in cutting down the tree because it is not 
laden with fruit as soon as it is planted. 

While Napoleon was exploring the ground and select- 
ing his point of attack, the Directory adopted no measures 
of self-defence. In a general way they suspected Bona- 



238 NAPOLEON chap. 

parte and dreaded him, but they had no proofs upon 
which they could act. Their minister of war, Dubois 
de Crance told them a plot was brewing, and advised 
the arrest of Napoleon. " Where are your proofs ? " 
demanded Gohier and Moulins. The minister could not 
furnish them. Then a police agent warned them. 
Locking the informer in a room, the Directors began to 
discuss the matter. The agent became alarmed for his 
own safety, and escaped through a window. 

Anxious to get Napoleon away from Paris, the Direc- 
tors offered him his choice of the armies. He pleaded 
shattered health, and declined. There were two parties, 
possibly three, with the aid of either of which Napoleon 
might have won his way to power. There were the 
Jacobins, the remnants of the thorough-going democrats, 
who had made the Revolution. These were represented 
in the Directory by Gohier and Moulins, men of mod- 
erate capacity and fine character. But Napoleon had 
been cured of his youthful Jacobinism, and believed 
that if he now conquered with the democrats, he would 
soon be called on to conquer against them. Again, 
there were the moderates, the politicians, who were sin- 
cere republicans, but who opposed the radicalism of 
the democrats on the one hand, and the weakness of 
the Directory on the other. Sieyes and Roger-Ducos 
represented these in the Directory, and their following 
among the rich and middle-class republicans was very 
large. Lastly came the Barras following, the Rotten, 
as Napoleon called them, who would agree to pretty 
much any change which would not take from them the 
opportunities of jobbery. 

Each of these parties courted Napoleon, who listened to 



XIX THE REMOVAL OF THE COUNCILS 239 

them all, used them all, and deceived them all. Barras he 
despised, yet lulled to the last moment. Gohier and Mou- 
lins were carefully manipulated and elaborately duped. 
Sieyes and his associates were used as tools, and then, 
after the bridge had been crossed, thrown over. 

Even the royalists were taken in ; they were beguiled 
with hints that Napoleon was preparing a way for the 
return of the Bourbons — he to act the part of Monk to 
the exiled King. 

Napoleon's first plan was to oust from the Directory the 
hateful Sieyes, — "that priest sold to Prussia," and this 
proposition he urged upon Gohier and Moulins. As there 
were no legal grounds upon which the election of Sieyes 
could be annulled, and as Napoleon himself had not reached 
the age of forty, required by the constitution, Gohier and 
Moulins refused to have anything to do with the scheme. 
Its mere mention should have put them on guard ; but it 
did not. Then Napoleon seemed, for a moment, to con- 
sider an alliance with Barras. Fouche and other friends 
of that Director brought the two together, and there was a 
dinner which was to have smoothed the way to an agree- 
ment. Unfortunately for Barras he blundered heavily in 
proposing an arrangement which meant that he should 
have the executive power, while Napoleon should merely 
be military chief. Napoleon, in disgust, looked the Direc- 
tor out of countenance, and, taking his carriage, returned 
home to tell Fouche what a fool Barras had made of him- 
self. The friends of the Director, going to him at once, 
were able to convince even him that he had bungled stu- 
pidly ; and next day he hastened to Bonaparte to try 
again. He was too late. Napoleon, upon leaving Barras 
the day before had called in to see Sieyes, and to tell him 



240 NAPOLEON chap. 

that the alliance of the Bonapartes would be made with 
him alone. 

Naturally these two men were antagonistic . When N apo- 
leon, quitting the army without orders, had landed at 
Frejus, Sieyes had proposed to his colleagues in the Direc- 
tory to have the deserter shot. The weak Directory had 
no such nerve as such a plan required, and the advice was 
ignored. Sieyes detested the abrupt, imperious soldier; 
and Napoleon despised the ex-priest as a confirmed, un- 
practical, and conceited visionary. Before he had failed 
with Gohier and Moulins, Napoleon had treated Sieyes 
with such contempt as to ignore his presence, when they 
were thrown together at one of the official banquets. The 
enraged ex-priest exclaimed to his friends, " See the inso- 
lence of that little fellow to a member of the government 
which ought to have had him shot ! " Napoleon, intent 
upon the plan of ousting Sieyes from the Directory, asked 
his friends, " What were they thinking about to put into 
the Directory that — priest sold to Prussia?" 

Powerful as were these feelings of reciprocal dislike, 
they were overcome. Talleyrand, Joseph Bonaparte, 
Cabanis, and others plied both the warrior and the priest 
with those arguments best suited to each. The prompt- 
ings of self-interest, as well as the necessities of the case, 
drew them together. With Sieyes — jealous, irritable, 
suspicious, impracticable — the task had been most diffi- 
cult. He knew he was being ensnared, — emphatically 
said so, — but yielded,. 

" Once Napoleon gets in he will push his colleagues 
behind him, like this," and Sieyes forcibly illustrated 
what he meant by bustling between Joseph and Cabanis, 
and then thrusting them back. Among the civilians the 



XIX THE REMOVAL OF THE COUNCILS 241 

Bonaparte campaign at this crisis was actively aided by- 
Talleyrand, Cambacer^s, Roger-Ducos, Roederer, Boulay, 
Regnier, Cabanis, the friend of Mirabeau. Among the 
soldiery the leading canvassers were Sebastian!, Murat, 
Leclerc, Marmont, Lannes, Macdonald. 

The plan agreed on was that the Council of Ancients, 
a majority having been gained over, should decree the 
removal of the legislative sessions to St. Cloud, name 
Napoleon commander of all the troops in Paris, appoint 
a provisional consulate (Napoleon, Sieyes, and Roger- 
Ducos), during which the councils should stand adjourned 
and a new constitution be framed. The day fixed upon 
was the 18th of Brumaire (November 9, 1799), and the 
Ancients were to meet at seven and pass the decrees 
agreed on by the Bonaparte steering committee. The 
Five Hundred, a majority of which had not been won, 
were to meet after the Ancients should have voted the 
removal of the councils to St. Cloud. Hence they would 
be powerless to prevent Napoleon from doing what he 
proposed for the 18th. Whether they would be able to 
resist him after they formed themselves at St. Cloud on 
the 19th, was another matter. 



CHAPTER XX 

npHERE were in Paris at this time certain battalions 
which had served under Napoleon in Italy ; also the 
directorial, legislative, and national guards, which he had 
organized. Naturally these troops were all favorably 
disposed toward him. They had been urging the great 
soldier to review them. The officers of the garrison and 
of the National Guard who had not been presented to 
him had asked him to receive them. Napoleon had post- 
poned action on these requests, thereby increasing the 
eagerness of officers and men. Now that his plans were 
matured, he named the 18th of Brumaire (November 9, 
1799) for the review, and invited the officers to call upon 
him early in the morning. His excuse for this unusual 
hour was that he would have to leave town. Other 
appointments of interest Napoleon made at about the same 
time. He had agreed to have a conference with Barras on 
the night of the ITth of Brumaire, and the Director had 
caught at the promise as the drowning catch at anything 
within reach. When Bourrienne went, about midnight, to 
plead headache for the absent Napoleon, he saw Barras's 
face fall as soon as the door opened. The worn-out 
debauchee had no faith in the headache of Napoleon ; 
but yet he had lacked the wish, or the energy, or the 
influence, to oppose the plot which he now felt sure was 
aimed at him as well as the others. • 

242 



CHAP. XX THE FALL OF THE DIRECTORY 243 

Gohier also had his appointments with Bonaparte. 
The Director was to breakfast, he and wife, with Napo- 
leon on the 18th of Brumaire, and Napoleon was to dine 
with Gohier on the same day. The minister of war, 
Dubois de Crance, had warned both Gohier and Moulins ; 
but it was not till this late day that Gohier became suspi- 
cious enough to stay away from Bonaparte's house on the 
morning of the 18th. His wife went, found the place 
thronged with officers in brilliant uniform, and soon 
left. 

In this assembly of soldiers stood the conspicuous fig- 
ure of Moreau. Discontented with the government, and 
without plan of his own, he had allowed Napoleon to win 
him by flattering words, accompanied by the compli- 
mentary gift of a jewelled sword. He had joined the 
movement with his eyes shut. He did not know the 
plan, and would not listen when Napoleon offered to 
explain it. 

Bernadotte, the jealous, had stood aloof. Inasmuch as 
he was, in some sort, a member of the Bonaparte family 
(he and Joseph having married sisters), earnest efforts 
had been made to neutralize him, if nothing more. Napo- 
leon afterward stated that Bernadotte would have joined 
him, had he been willing to accept Bernadotte as a 
colleague. 

Whatever efforts were made to gain this inveterate 
enemy of Napoleon had no other result than to put him 
in possession of the secret, and to fill him with a cautious 
desire to defeat the plot. Augereau and Jourdan, both 
members of the Five Hundred, and known Jacobins, 
were not approached at all. General Beumonville, the 
ex-Girondin, had joined. 



244 NAPOLEON chap. 

Meanwhile the conspiracy was at work from the Sieyes- 
Talleyrand end of the line. The Council of Ancients, 
convoked at seven in the morning in order that unfriendly 
and unnotified deputies might not be present, voted that 
the councils should meet at St. Cloud, and that Napoleon 
should be invested with command of all the troops in 
Paris. This decree, brought to him at his house, was im- 
mediately read by him from the balcony, and heard with 
cheers by the officers below. 

The Napoleonic campaign was based upon the assump- 
tion that the country was in danger, that the Jacobins 
had made a plot to overthrow everything, and that all 
good citizens must rush to the rescue. Upon this idea 
the council had voted its own removal to a place of safety, 
and had appointed Napoleon to defend the government 
from the plotters who were about to pounce upon it. 
Therefore when Napoleon read the decree, he called aloud 
to the brilliant throng of uniformed officers, " Will you 
help me save the country ? " Wildly they shouted " Yes," 
and waved their swords aloft. Bernadotte and a few 
others did not like the looks of things, and drew apart; 
but, with these exceptions, all were enthusiastic ; and when 
Napoleon mounted his horse, they followed. He went to 
the Council of Ancients, where he took the oath of office, 
swearing not to the constitution then in existence, but 
that France should have a republic based on civil liberty 
and national representation. 

The councils stood adjourned to St. Cloud, and Napo- 
leon went into the gardens of the Tuileries to review the 
troops. He briefly harangued them, and was everywhere 
hailed by them with shouts of " Long live Bonaparte ! " 
So strong ran the current that Fouche volunteered aid 



XX THE FALL OF THE DIRECTORY 245 

that had not been asked, and closed the city gates. " My 
God! what is that for?" said Napoleon. "Order the 
gates opened. I march with the nation, and I want noth- 
ing done which would recall the days when factious mi- 
norities terrorized the people." 

Augereau, seeing victory assured, regretted that he 
had not been taken into the confidence of his former 
chief, " Why, General, have you forgotten your old com- 
rade, Augereau?" (Literally, "Your little Augereau.") 
Napoleon had no confidence in him, no use for him, and 
virtually told him so. 

The Directory fell of its own weight ; Sieyes and Roger- 
Ducos, as it had been agreed, resigned. Gohier and Mou- 
lins would not violate the constitution, which forbade less 
than three Directors to consult together ; and the third 
man, Barras, could not be got to act. The plot had 
caught him unprepared. He knew that something of the 
kind was oii foot, and had tried to get on the inside ; but 
he did not suspect that Napoleon would spring the trap 
so soon. He had forgotten one of the very essential 
elements in Napoleonic strategy. Barras bitterly denies 
that the calamity dropped upon him while he was in his 
bath. He strenuously contends that he was shaving. 
When Talleyrand and Bruix came walking in with a 
paper ready-drawn for him to sign, he signed. It was 
his resignation as Director. Bitterly exclaiming, " That 
— Bonaparte has fooled us all," he made his swift prepa- 
rations, left the palace, and was driven, under Napoleonic 
escort, to his country-seat of Gros-Bois. His signature had 
been obtained, partly by threats, partly by promises. He 
was to have protection, keep his ill-gotten wealth, and, 
perhaps, finger at least one more bribe. It is said that 



246 NAPOLEON chap. 

Talleyrand, in paying over this last, kept the lion's share 
for himself. 

The minister of war, Dubois de Crance, had been run- 
ning about seeking Directors who would give him the 
order to arrest Napoleon. How he expected to execute 
such an order if he got it, is not stated. As Napoleon 
was legally in command of eight thousand soldiers, who 
were even then bawling his name at the top of their 
voices, and as there were no other troops in Paris, it may 
have been a fortunate thing for the minister of war that 
he failed to get what he was running after. 

From this distant point of view, the sight of Dubois 
de Crance, chasing the Napoleonic programme, suggests a 
striking resemblance to the excitable small dog who runs, 
frantically barking, after the swiftly moving train of cars. 
" What would he do with it if he caught it ? " is as natu- 
ral a query in the one case as in the other. 

So irresistible was the flow of the Bonaparte tide that 
even Lefebvre, commander of the guard of the Direc- 
tory, a man who had not been taken into the secret, and 
who went to Bonaparte's house in ill-humor, to know 
what such a movement of troops meant, was won by a 
word, a magnetic glance, a caressing touch, and the tact- 
ful gift of the sabre " which I wore at the Battle of the 
Pyramids." " Will you, a republican, see the lawyers 
ruin the Republic ? Will you help me ? " " Let us 
throw the lawyers into the river ! " answered the simple- 
minded soldier, promptly. 

According to Fouche, it was about nine o'clock in the 
morning when Dubois found the two Directors, Gohier 
and Moulins, and asked for the order to arrest Bonaparte. 
While they were in doubt and hesitating, the secretary 



XX THE FALL OF THE DIRECTORY 247 

of the Directory, Lagarde, stated that he would not coun- 
tersign such an order unless three Directors signed it. 

"After all," remarked Gohier, encouragingly, "how 
can they have a revolution . at St. Cloud when I have the 
seals of the Republic in my possession ? " Nothing legal 
could be attested without the seals. Gohier had the 
seals ; hence, Gohier was master of the situation. Of 
such lawyers, in such a crisis, well might Lefebvre say, 
"Let us pitch them into the river." 

Quite relieved by the statement about the seals, Moulins 
remembered another crumb of comfort : he had been 
invited to meet Napoleon at dinner that very day at 
Gohier's. Between the soup and the cheese, the two 
honest Directors would penetrate the designs of the 
schemer, Napoleon, and then checkmate him. 

Moreau had already been commissioned to keep these 
confiding legists from running at large. However, it 
was not a great while before they realized the true situa- 
tion, and then they came to a grotesque conclusion. They 
would go to Napoleon and talk him out of his purpose. 
Barras had already sent Bottot, his private secretary, to 
see if anything could be arranged. Napoleon had sternly 
said, " Tell that man I have done with him." He had 
also addressed the astonished Bottot a short harangue in- 
tended for publication : " What have you done with that 
France I left so brilliant ? In place of victory, I find 
defeat " — and so forth. 

Gohier and Moulins were civilly treated, but their pro- 
tests were set aside. They reminded Napoleon of the 
constitution, and of the oath of allegiance. He demanded 
their resignations. They refused, and continued to 
remonstrate. At this moment word came that Santerro 



248 NAPOLEON chaf. 

was rousing the section St. Antoine. Napoleon said to 
Moulins, " Send word to your friend Santerre that at the 
first movement St. Antoine makes, I will have him shot." 
No impression having been made by the Directors on 
Napoleon, nor by him on them, they went back to their 
temporary prison in the Luxembourg. 

Thus far there had been no hitch in the Bonaparte pro- 
gramme. The alleged Jacobin plot nowhere showed head; 
the Napoleonic plot was in full and peaceable possession. 
There was no great excitement in Paris, no unusual 
crowds collecting anywhere. Proclamation had been 
issued to put the people at ease, and the attitude of the 
public was one of curiosity and expectancy, rather than 
alarm. Not a single man had rallied to the defence of 
the Directory. Their own guard had quietly departed 
to swell the ranks which were shouting, " Hurrah for 
Bonaparte ! " Victor Grand, aide-de-camp to Barras, did 
indeed wait upon that forlorn Director at seven o'clock 
in the morning of the 18th, and report to him that one 
veteran of the guards was still at his post. " I am here 
alone," said the old soldier; " all have left." 

Here and there were members of the councils and 
generals of the army who were willing enough to check 
the conspiracy of Napoleon, if they had only known how. 
With the Directory smashed, the councils divided and 
removed, the troops on Napoleon's side, and Paris in- 
different, how could Bernadotte, Jourdan, and Augereau 
do anything ? 

They could hold dismal little meetings behind closed 
doors, discuss the situation, and decide that Napoleon must 
be checked. But who was to bell the cat ? At a meeting 
held by a few deputies and Bernadotte in the house of 



XX THE FALL OF THE DIRECTORY 849 

Salicetti, it was agreed that they should go to St. Cloud 
next morning, get Bernadotte appointed commander of 
the legislative guard, and that he should then combat the 
conspirators. Salicetti betrayed this secret to Napoleon ; 
and, through Fouche, he frustrated the plan by adroitly 
detaining its authors in Paris next morning. 

To make assurance doubly sure, orders were issued that 
any one attempting to harangue the troops should be cut 
down. 

Sieyes advised that the forty or fifty members of the 
councils most violently opposed to the Bonaparte pro- 
gramme be arrested during the night. Napoleon refused. 
" I will not break the oath I took this morning." 

By noon of the 19th of Brumaire (November 10, 1799) 
the members of the councils were at St. Cloud, excited, sus- 
picious, indignant. Even among the Ancients, a reaction 
against Napoleon had taken place. Many of the members 
had supported him on the 18th of Brumaire because they 
believed he would be satisfied with a place in the Direc- 
tory. Since then further conferences and rumors had 
convinced them that he aimed at a dictatorship. Besides, 
those deputies who had been tricked out of attending the 
session of the day before, resented the wrong, and were 
ready to resist the tricksters. During the couple of hours 
which (owing to some blunder) they had to wait for their 
halls to be got ready, the members of the two councils 
had full opportunity to intermingle, consult, and measure 
the strength of the opposition. When at length they met 
in their respective chambers, they were in the frame of 
mind which produces that species of disturbance known 
as a parliamentary storm. Napoleon and his officers 
were grimly waiting in another room of the palace for the 



2^ NAPOLEON chap. 

cut-and-dried programme to be proposed and voted. 
Sieyes had a coach and six ready at the gates to flee in 
case of mishaj). 

In the Five Hundred the uproar began with the session. 
The overwhelming majority was against Bonaparte — this 
much the members had already ascertained. But the op- 
position had not had time to arrange a programme. Dep- 
uty after deputy sprang to his feet and made motions, but 
opinions had not been f ocussed. One suggestion, however, 
carried ; they would all swear again to support the con- 
stitution : this would uncover the traitors. It did noth- 
ing of the kind. The conspirators took the oath without 
a grimace — Lucien Bonaparte and all. As each member 
had to swear separately, some two hours were consumed 
in this childish attempt to uncover traitors and buttress a 
falling constitution. 

In the Ancients, also, a tempest was brewing. When 
the men, selected by the Bonaparte managers, made their 
opening speeches and motions, opposition was heard, ex- 
planations were demanded, and awkward questions asked. 
Why move the councils to St. Cloud? Why vest extraor- 
dinary command in Bonaparte ? Where was this great 
Jacobin plot ? Give facts and name names ! 

No satisfaction could be given to such demands. The 
confusion was increased by the report made to the body 
that four of the Directors had resigned. Proceedings were 
suspended until the Council of Five Hundred could receive 
this report, and some action be suggested for filling the 
places thus made vacant. 

At this point Napoleon entered the hall. He could 
hear the wrangle going on in the Five Hundred, but he 
had not expected trouble in the Ancients. The situation 



XX THE FALL OF THE DIKECTOEY 251 

had begun to look dangerous. Augereau, thinking it 
safe to vent his true feeling, had jeeringly said to Napo- 
leon, "Now you are in a pretty fix." 

" It was worse at Arcole," was the reply. 

Napoleon had harangued sympathetic Jacobins in small 
political meetings ; but to address a legislative body was 
new to him. His talk to the Ancients was incoherent 
and weak. He could not give the true reasons for his 
conduct, and the pretended reason could not be strength- 
ened by explanation or fact. He was asked to specify the 
dangers which he said threatened the Republic, asked to 
describe the conspiracy, and name the conspirators. He 
could not do so, and after rambling all round the subject, 
his friends pulled him out of the chamber. Notwith- 
standing his disastrous speech, the conspiracy asserted its 
strength, and the Council of Ancients was held to the 
Bonaparte programme. Napoleon at once went to the 
Council of Five Hundred, and his appearance, accompa- 
nied by armed men, caused a tumult. " Down with the 
Dictator ! For shame ! Was it for this you conquered. 
Get out ! Put him out ! " Excited members sprang to 
their feet shouting, gesticulating, threatening. Rough 
hands were laid upon him. Knives may have been drawn. 
The Corsican, Peretti, had threatened Mirabeau with a 
knife in the assembly hall : Tallien had menaced Robes- 
pierre with a dagger ; there is no inherent improbability 
in the story that the Corsican, Arena, a bitter enemy of 
Napoleon, now struck at him with a knife. At all events, 
the soldiers thought Napoleon in such danger that they 
drew him out of the press. General Gardanne (it is said) 
bearing him backward in his arms. 

"flbrs la loi! " was shouted in the hall — the cry before 



252 NAPOLEON chap. 

which Robespierre had gone down. " Outlaw him ! Out- 
law him ! " 

Lucien Bonaparte, president of the body, refused to 
put the motion. The anger of the Assembly then vented 
itself upon Lucien, who vainly attempted to be heard in 
defence of his brother. " He wanted to explain," cried 
Lucien, " and you would not hear him ! " Finding the 
tumult grow worse, and the demand that he put the motion 
grow more imperative, he stripped himself of the robe of 
office, sent for an escort of soldiers, and was borne out by 
Napoleon's grenadiers. 

While the council chamber rang with its uproar, there 
had been consternation outside. For a moment the Bona- 
parte managers hesitated. They had not foreseen such a 
check. Napoleon himself harangued the troops ; and tell- 
ing them that an attempt had been made on his life, was 
answered by cries of " Long live Bonaparte ! " It was 
noticed that he changed his position every moment, zig- 
zagging as much as possible, like a man who feared some 
assassin might aim at him from a window in the palace. 
He said to Sieyes, " They want to outlaw me ! " Seated 
in his carriage, ready to run, but not yet dismayed, the 
ex -priest is said to have answered : " Then do you outlaw 
them. Put them out." Napoleon, reentering the room 
where the officers were sitting or standing, in dismay and 
inaction, struck the table with his riding-whip, and said, 
" I must put an end to this." They all followed him out. 
Lucien, springing upon a horse, harangued the troops, 
calling upon them to drive out from the hall the factious 
minority which was intimidating the virtuous majority of 
the council. The soldiers hesitated. Drawing his sword, 
Lucien shouted, " I swear that I will stab my brother to 



XX THE FALL OF THE DIRECTORY 253 

the heart if ever he attempt anything against the liberties 
of the people ! " 

This was dramatic, and it succeeded. The troops re- 
sponded with cheers, and Napoleon saw that they were 
at length ready. '•'- Now I will soon settle those gentle- 
men ! " He gave Murat the signal ; Murat and Le Clerc 
took the lead ; and to the roll of drums the file advanced. 
The legislators would have spoken to the troops, but the 
drums drowned the protest. Before the advancing line 
of steel, the members fled their hall, and the Bonaparte 
campaign was decided. 

But once more Sieyes was the giver of sage advice. 
Legal forms must be respected. France was not yet 
ready for the bared sword of the military despot. The 
friendly members of the Council of Five Hundred must 
be sought out and brought back to the hall. The 
deputies were not yet gone, were still lingering in aston- 
ishment and grief and rage about the palace. Lucien 
Bonaparte, the hero of this eventful day, contrived to 
assemble about thirty members of the Council of Five 
Hundred who would vote the Bonaparte programme 
through. They spent most of the night adopting the 
measures proposed. It was past midnight when the 
decrees of this Rump Parliament were presented to 
the Ancients for ratification. In that assembly the Bona- 
parte influence was again supreme, and no bayonets were 
needed there. Napoleon, Sieyes, and Roger-Ducos hav- 
ing been named provisional consuls, appeared before the 
Five Hundred between midnight and day to take the oath 
of oflice. 

The legislative councils then stood adjourned till Febru- 
ary 19, 1800. Commissions had been selected to aid in 



254 NAPOLEON chap. 

framing the constitution. Lucien made the last speech 
of the Revolution, and, according to Mr. Lanfrey, it was 
the most bombastic piece of nonsense and falsehood that 
had been uttered during the entire period. He compared 
the Tennis Court Oath to the work just done, and said 
that, as the former had given birth to liberty, this day's 
work had given it manhood and permanence. 

Not until the last detail of the work had been finished 
and put in legal form, did Napoleon quit St. Cloud. He 
had even dictated a proclamation in which he gave to 
the public his own account of the events of the day. 
He again laid stress on the Jacobin plot which had threat- 
ened the Republic, he again renewed his vows to that 
Republic, he praised the conduct of the Ancients, and 
claimed that the violence used against the Five Hundred 
had been made necessary by the factious men, would-be 
assassins, who had sought to intimidate the good men of 
that body. This proclamation was posted in Paris before 
day. 

To humor the fiction, if it was a fiction, that Napoleon 
had been threatened with knives, a grenadier, Thomas 
Thom^, was brought forward, who said that he had 
warded off the blow. He showed where his clothes had 
been cut or torn. As soon as the stage could be properly 
arranged for the scene, the amiable and grateful Jose- 
phine publicly embraced Thome and made him a present 
of jewels. Napoleon promoted him later to a captaincy. 

The men who stood by Napoleon in this crisis left him 
under a debt which he never ceased to acknowledge and 
to pay. With one possible exception, he loaded them 
with honors and riches. The possible exception was 
Collot, the banker, who, according to Fouche, supplied 



THE FALL OF THE DIRECTORY 266 

.d campaign fund. The bare fact that Napoleon did 
not at any time treat Collot with favor, is strong circum- 
stantial evidence that he rendered no such aid at this 
crisis as created a debt of gratitude. 

It was morning, but before daybreak, when Napoleon, 
tired but exultant, reached home from St. Cloud. As he 
threw himself upon the bed by the side of Josephine, he 
called out to his secretary : — 

" Remember, Bourrienne, we shall sleep in the Luxem- 
bourg to-morrow." 



CHAPTER XXI 

AN Sunday evening, Brumaire 19, Napoleon had been 
a desperate political gambler, staking fortune and life 
upon a throw ; on Monday morning following he calmly 
seated himself in the armchair at the palace of the Luxem- 
bourg and began to give laws to France. He took the 
first place and held it, not by any trick or legal contriv- 
ance, but by his native imperiousness and superiority. In 
genius, in cunning, in courage, he was the master of the 
doctrinaire Sieyes, and of the second-rate lawyer, Roger- 
Ducos ; besides, he held the army in the hollow of his 
hand. 

The sad comfort of saying " I told you so," was all that 
was left to Sieyes. " Gentlemen, we have a master," said 
he to his friends that Monday evening ; and the will of 
this imperious colleague he did not seriously try to oppose. 
In the very first meeting of the consuls, Napoleon had won 
the complete supremacy by refusing to share in the secret 
fund which the Directors had hidden away for their 
own uses. They had emptied the treasury, and had spent 
$15,000,000 in advance of the revenues, yet they had laid 
by for the rainy day which might overtake themselves 
personally the sum of 800,000 francs or about |160,000. 
Sieyes blandly called attention to this fact, and "proposed 
that he, Ducos, and Napoleon should divide the fund. 

256 




NAPOLEON 
As First Consul, at Malmaison. From a painting by J. B. Isabej 



CHAP. XXI FIRST CONSUL 257 

*' Share it between you," said Napoleon, wh© refused to 
touch it. 



Without the slightest apparent effort, Napoleon's genias 
expanded to the great work of reorganizing the Republic. 
Heretofore he had been a man of camps and battle-fields ; 
but he had so completely mastered everything connected 
with the recruiting equipment and maintenance of an 
army, had served so useful an apprenticeship in organiz 
ing the Italian republics, and had been to school to such 
purpose in dealing with politicians of all sorts, negotiat- 
ing treaties, and sounding the secrets of parties, that he 
really came to his great task magnificently trained by 
actual experience. 

In theory the new government of the three consuls was 
only experimental, limited to sixty days. The two coun- 
cils had not been dissolved. Purged of about sixty vio- 
lently anti-Bonaparte members, the Ancients and the Five 
Hundred were but adjourned to the 19th of February, 
1800. If by that time the consuls had not been able to 
offer to France a new scheme of government which would 
be accepted, the councils were to meet again and decide 
what should be done. On paper, therefore. Napoleon was 
a consul on probation, a pilot on a trial trip. In his own 
eyes he was permanent chief of the State ; and his every 
motion was made under the impulse of that conviction. 

Determined that there should be no reaction, that the 
scattered forces of the opposition should have no common 
cause and centre of revolt, he stationed his soldiers at 
threatened points ; and then used all the art of the fin- 
ished politician to deceive and divide the enemy. To the 



258 NAPOLEON chap. 

royalists he held out the terror of a Jacobin revival ; to 
the Jacobin, the dread of a Bourbon restoration. To the 
clergy he hinted a return of the good old days when no 
man could legally be born, innocently married, decently 
die, or be buried with hope of heaven, unless a priest had 
charge of the functions. But above all was his pledge of 
strong government, one which would quell faction, restore 
order, secure property, guarantee civil liberty, and make 
the Republic prosperous and happy. The belief that he 
would make good his word was the foundation of the 
almost universal approval with which his seizure of power 
was regarded. He was felt to be the one man who could 
drag the Republic out- of the ditch, reinspire the armies, 
cleanse the public service, restore the ruined finances, 
establish law and order, and blend into a harmonious 
nationality the factions which were rending France. Be- 
sides, it was thought that a strong government would be 
the surest guarantee of peace with foreign nations, as it 
was believed that the weakness of the Directory was an 
encouragement to the foreign enemies of the country. 

One of Napoleon's first acts was to proclaim amnesty 
for political offences. He went in person to set free the 
hostages imprisoned in the Temple. Certain priests and 
emigres who had been cast into prison, he released. The 
law of hostages, which held relatives responsible for the 
conduct of relatives, he repealed. 

The victims of Fructidor (September, 1797) who had 
been banished, he recalled — Pichegru and Aubrey 
excepted. 

Mr. Lanfrey says that this exception from the pardon 
is proof of Napoleon's "mean and cruel nature." Let us 
see. Pichegru, a republican general, in command of 



XXI FIRST CONSUL 259 

a republican army, had taken gold from the Bourbons, 
and had agreed to betray his army and his country. Not 
only that, he had purposely allowed that army to be 
beaten by the enemy. As Desaix remarked, Pichegru 
was perhaps the only general known to history who had 
ever done a thing of the kind. Was Napoleon mean and 
cruel in letting such a man remain in exile ? Had Wash- 
ington captured and shot Benedict Arnold, would that 
have been proof that Washington's nature was mean and 
cruel ? In leaving Pichegru where he was. Napoleon 
acted as leniently as possible with a self-convicted traitor. 

As to Aubrey, he had held a position of the highest trust 
under the Republic, while he was at heart a royalist ; he 
had used that position to abet royalist conspiracies ; he 
had gone out of his way to degrade Napoleon, had re- 
fused to listen to other members of the government in 
Napoleon's favor, and had urged against Napoleon two rea- 
sons which revealed personal malice, — Napoleon's youth, 
and Napoleon's politics. To pardon such a man might 
have been magnanimous ; to leave him under just con- 
demnation was neither mean nor cruel. 

Under the law of that time, there were about 142,000 
emigres who had forfeited life and estate. They had 
staked all in opposition to the Revolution, had lost, and 
had been put under penalty. Almost immediately. Napo- 
leon began to open the way for the return of these exiles 
and for the restoration of their property. As rapidly as 
possible, he broadened the scope of his leniency until all 
emigres had been restored to citizenship save the very fev^ 
(about one thousand) who were so identified with the Bour 
bons, or who had so conspicuously made war "on France, 
that their pardon was not deemed judicious. 



260 NAPOLEON chap. 

Priests were gradually relieved from all penalties and 
allowed to exercise their office. Churches were used by 
Christians on the seventh-day Sabbath, and by Theophi- 
lanthropists on the Decadi — the tenth-day holiday. The 
one sect came on the seventh day with holy water, candles, 
holy image, beads, crucifix, song, prayer, and sermon on 
faith, hope, and charity, — with the emphasis thrown on 
the word. Faith. The other sect came on the tenth day 
with flowers for the altar, hymns and addresses in honor 
of those noble traits which constitute lofty character, 
and with the emphasis laid upon such words as Brother- 
hood, Charity, Mercy, and Love. 

It was not a great while, of course, before the Christians 
(so recently pardoned) found it impossible to tolerate the 
tenth-day people ; and they were quietly suppressed in 
the Concordat. 

One of the Directors, Larevelliere, was an ardent Theo- 
philanthropist, and he had made vigorous effort to enroll 
Napoleon on that side, soon after the Italian campaign. 
The sect, being young and weak, found no favor whatever 
in the eyes of the ambitious politician ; and he who in 
Egypt sat cross-legged among the ulemas and muftis, 
demurely taking lessons from the Koran, had no hesita- 
tion in repelling the advances of Theosophy. 

Going, perhaps, too far in his leniency to the emigres 
(Napoleon said later that it was the greatest mistake he 
ever made !), the new government certainly erred in its 
severity toward the Jacobins. Some fifty-nine of these 
were proscribed for old offences, and sentenced to banish- 
ment. Public sentiment declared against this arbitrary 
ex post facto measure so strongly that it was not enforced. 

The men of the wealthy class were drawn to the govern- 



Ill FIRST CONSUL 261 

ment by the repeal of the law called the Forced Loan. 
This was really an income tax, the purpose of which was 
to compel the capitalists to contribute to the support of 
• the State. The Directors, fearing that the rich men who 
were subject to the tax might not make true estimates 
and returns, assessed it by means of a jury. Dismal and 
resonant wails arose from among the stricken capitalists. 

Although the government created the tax as a loan, 
to be repaid from the proceeds of the national domain, the 
antagonism it excited was intense. In England, Mr. Pitt 
had (1798) imposed a tax upon incomes, — very heavy in 
its demands, and containing the progressive principle of 
the larger tax for the larger income, — but the Directors were 
too feeble to mould the same instrument to their purpose in 
France. Faultily assessed, stubbornly resisted, irregularly 
collected, it yielded the Directory more odium than cash. 

The five per cent funds which had fallen to one and a 
half per cent of their par value before the 18th of Brumaire, 
had risen at once to twelve per cent, and were soon quoted 
at seventeen. 

Confidence having returned. Napoleon was able to bor- 
row 12,000,000 francs for the immediate necessities of the 
State. The income tax having been abolished, an advance 
of twenty-five per cent was made in the taxes on realty, 
personalty, and polls. Heretofore, these taxes had been 
badly assessed, badly collected, imperfectly paid into the 
treasury. Napoleon at once remodelled the methods of 
assessment, collection, and accounting. Tax collectors 
were required to give bonds in cash ; were made responsi- 
ble for the amount of the taxes legally assessed; were 
given a certain time within which to make collection, and 
were required to give their own bills for the amount 



262 NAPOLEON chap. 

assessed. These bills, backed by the cash deposit of the 
collectors, became good commercial paper immediately, 
and thus the government was supplied with funds even 
before the taxes had been paid. 

It was with this cash deposit of the collectors that 
Napoleon paid for the stock which the government took 
in the Bank of France which he organized in January, 
1800. 

There yet remained in the hands of the government a 
large amount of the confiscated land, and some of this 
was sold. To these sources of revenue were soon added 
the contributions levied upon neighboring and dependent 
states, such as Genoa, Holland, and the Hanse towns. 

Under the Directory, tax-collecting and recruiting for 
the army had been badly done because the work had been 
left to local authorities. The central government could 
not act upon the citizen directly ; it had to rely upon 
these local authorities. When, therefore, the local author- 
ities failed to act, the machinery of administration was at 
a standstill. Napoleon changed all this, and devised a 
system by which the government dealt directly with the 
citizen. It was a national officer, assisted by a council, 
who assessed and collected taxes. The prefects appointed 
by Napoleon took the place of the royal intendants of the 
Bourbon system. Holding office directly from the cen- 
tral government, and accountable to it alone, these local 
authorities became cogs in the wheel of a vast, resist- 
less machine controlled entirely by the First Consul. 
So. perfect was the system of internal administration which 
he devised, that it has stood the shock of all the changes 
which have since occurred in France. 

Keeping himself clear of parties, and adhering steadily 



XII FIRST CONSUL 263 

to the policy of fusion, Napoleon gave employment to 
men of all creeds. He detested rogues, speculators, em- 
bezzlers. He despised mere talkers and professional ora- 
tors. He wanted workers, strenuous and practical. He 
cared nothing for antecedents, nor for private morals. 
He knew the depravity of Fouche and Talleyrand, yet 
used them. He gave employment to royalists, Jacobins, 
Girondins, Deists, Christians, and infidels. " Can he do 
the work, and will he do it honestly ? " these were the 
supreme tests. No enmity would deprive him of the ser- 
vice of the honest and capable. No friendship would 
tolerate the continuance in office of the dishonest or in- 
competent. Resolute in this policy of taking men as he 
found them, of making the most of the materials at hand, 
he gave high employment to many a man whom he per- 
sonally disliked. He gave to Talleyrand the ministry of 
foreign affairs, to Fouche that of the police, to Carnot 
that of war. To Moreau he gave the largest of French 
armies ; Augereau, Bernadotte, Jourdan, he continued to 
employ. "I cannot create men ; I must use those I find." 
Again he said, " The 18th of Brumaire is a wall of brass, 
separating the past from the present." 

If they were capable, if they were honest, it did not 
matter to Napoleon whether they had voted to kill the 
King or to save him ; he put them to work for France. 
Once in office, they must work. No sinecures, no salaries 
paid as hush money, or indirect bribe, or pension for past 
service, or screen for the privileged ; without exception 
all must earn their wages. " Come, gentlemen ! " Napo- 
leon would say cheerfully to counsellors of State who had 
already been hammering away for ten or twelve hours, 
" Come, gentlemen, it is only two o'clock ! Let us get 



264 NAPOLEON chap. 

on to something else ; we must earn the money the State 
pays us." He himself labored from twelve to eighteen 
hours each day, and his activity ran the whole gamut of 
public work, — from the inspection of the soldier's out- 
fit, the planning of roads, bridges, quays, monuments, 
churches, public buildings, the selection of a sub-prefect, 
the choice of a statue for the palace, the review of a regi- 
ment, the dictation of a despatch, or the details of a tax- 
digest, to the grand outlines of organic law, national pol- 
icy, and the movements of all the armies of the Republic. 
Under the Directory, the military administration had 
broken down so completely that the war office had lost 
touch with the army. Soldiers were not fed, clothed, or 
paid by the State. They could subsist only by plundering 
friends and foes alike. Frightful ravages were committed 
by civil and military agents of the French Republic in Italy, 
Switzerland, and along the German frontier. When Na- 
poleon applied to the late minister of war, Dubois de 
Crance, for information about the army, he could get 
none. Special couriers had to be sent to the various com- 
mands to obtain the most necessary reports. Under such 
mismanagement, desertions had become frequent in the 
army, and recruiting had almost ceased. The old patri- 
otic enthusiasm had disappeared ; the " Marseillaise " per- 
formed at the theatres, by order of the Directory, was 
received with hoots. To breathe new life into French- 
men, to inspire them again with confidence, hope, enthu- 
siasm, was the great task of the new government. The Jaco- 
bin was to be made to tolerate the royalist, the Girondin, the 
Feuillant, and the priest. Each of these in turn must be 
made to tolerate each other and the Jacobin. The noble 
must consent to live quietly within the Republic which 



XXI FIRST CONSUL 266 

had confiscated his property, and by the side of the man 
who now owned it. The republican must dwell in har- 
mony with the emigrant aristocracy which had once 
trodden him to the earth, and which had leagued all 
Europe against France in the efforts to restore old abuses. 
In the equality created by law, the democrat must grow 
accustomed to the sight of nobles and churchmen in 
office ; and the man of the highest birth must be content 
to work with a colleague whose birth was of the lowest. 
Ever since the Revolution began, there had been alternate 
massacres of Catholics by revolutionists, and of revolu- 
tionists by Catholics. It is impossible to say which shed 
the greatest amount of blood — the Red Terror of the 
Jacobins, or the White Terror of the Catholics. Fanati- 
cism in the one case as in the other had shown a ferocity 
of the most relentless description. The cruel strife was 
now to be put down, and the men who had been cutting 
each other's throats were to be made to keep the peace. 

Napoleon, in less than a year, had completely triumphed 
over the difficulties of his position. The machinery 
of state was working with resistless vigor throughout 
the realm. The taxes were paid, the laws enforced, 
order reestablished, brigandage put down, La Vendee 
pacified, civil strife ended. The credit of the govern- 
ment was restored, public funds rose, confidence returned. 
Men of all parties, of all creeds, found themselves work- 
ing zealously to win the favor of him who worked 
harder than any mortal known to history. 

Meanwhile Sieyes and the two commissions had been 
at work on the new constitution. Dreading absolute 
monarchy on the one hand, and unbridled democracy 
on the other, Sieyes had devised a plan of government 



266 NAPOLEON chap. 

which, as he believed, combined the best features of 
both systems. There was to be universal suffrage. 
Every tax -paying adult Frenchman who cared enough 
about the franchise to go and register should have a 
vote. But these voters did not choose office-holders. 
They simply elected those from whom the office-holders 
should be chosen. The great mass of the people were 
to elect one-tenth of their number, who would be the 
notables of the commune. These would, in turn, elect 
one-tenth of their number, who would be the notables 
of the department. These again would elect one-tenth, 
who would be the national notables. From these nota- 
bles would be chosen the office-holders, — national, depart- 
mental, and communal. This selection was made, not 
by the people, but by the executive. There was to be 
a council of state working immediately with the execu- 
tive by whom its members were appointed. This council 
acting with the executive would propose laws to the 
tribunate, an assembly which could debate these pre- 
pared measures and which could send three of its 
members to the legislative council to favor or oppose 
the law. This legislature could hear the champions of 
the tribunate, and also the delegates from the council of 
state; and after the speeches of these advocates, pro 
and con, the legislature, as a constitutional jury which 
heard debate without itself debating, could vote on the 
proposed law. Besides, there was to be a Senate, named 
by the executive, holding office for life. This Senate 
was to choose the members of the legislative council 
and of the tribunate, as well as the judges of the high 
court of appeals. In the Senate was lodged the power 
of deciding whether laws were constitutional. 



XXI * FIRST CONSUL 2fl7 

According to the Sieyes plan, there were to have been 
two consuls, of war and of peace respectively; and 
these consuls were to have named ministers to carry 
on the government through their appointees. Above 
the two consuls was to be placed a grand elector, who 
should be lodged in a palace, maintained in great state, 
magnificently salaried, but who should have no power 
beyond the choice of the consuls. If the Senate should 
be of the opinion, at any time, that the grand elector 
was not conducting himself properly, it could absorb 
him into its own body, and choose another. 

Sieyes had been one of the charter members of the revo- 
lutionary party, had helped to rock the cradle when the 
infant was newly born, had lived through all the changes 
of its growth, manhood, madness, and decline. Much of 
the permanent good work of the Revolution was his. He 
now wished to frame for the French such a fundamental 
law as would guard their future against the defects of 
their national character, while it preserved to them what 
was best in the great principles of the Revolution. 

Once a churchman himself, he knew the Church and 
dreaded it. He feared that the priests, working through 
superstitious fears upon the minds of ignorant masses, 
would finally educate them into hostility to the new order 
— train them to believe that the Old Regime had been the 
best, and should be restored. To get rid of this danger 
(the peril of royalists and priests from above acting upon 
the ignorant masses below), the far-sighted statesman, 
dealing with France as it was, did not favor popular sover- 
eignty. Only by indirection were the masses to be allowed 
to choose their rulers. The people could choose the local 
notables from whom the local officers must be taken ; and 



268 NAPOLEON chap. 

these local notables could vote for departmental notables 
from whom departmental officers should be chosen ; and 
those departmental notables would select from their own 
numbers the national notables from whom holders for 
national positions must be taken. 

These electoral bodies grew smaller as they went up- 
ward. The 5,000,000 voters of the nation first elected 
500,000 local notables ; these chose from themselves 50,000 
departmental electors ; and these in turn took by vote 
5000 of their own number to constitute the electoral class 
for national appointments. The executive filled all offices 
from these various groups. From below, the masses 
furnished the material to be used in governing; from 
above, the executive made its own selection from that 
material. 

This was far from being representative government; 
but it was far from being mere despotism, military or 
otherwise. It was considered as free a system as France 
was then prepared for ; and he is indeed a wise man who 
knows that she would have done better under a constitu- 
tion which granted unlimited popular control. The French 
had not been educated or trained in republican government, 
and the efforts which had been made to uphold a republic 
in the absence of such education and experience had re- 
sulted in the dictatorship of the Great Committee and of 
the Directory. 

Napoleon and Sieyes were agreed on the subject of 
popular suffrage ; they were far apart on the question of 
the executive. By nature " imperious, obstinate, master- 
ful," the great Corsican had no idea of becoming a fatu- 
ous, function less elector. "What man of talent and honor 
would consent to such a role, — to feed and fatten like a 



XXI FIRST CONSUL 269 

pig in a stye on so many millions a year ? " Before this 
scornful opposition the grand elector vanished. In his 
place was put a First Consul, in whom were vested all 
executive powers. Two associate consuls were given him, 
but their functions in no way trenched upon his. 

The constitution, rapidly completed, was submitted 
to the people by the middle of December, 1799. It was 
adopted by three million votes — the negative vote being 
insignificant. 

" This constitution is founded on the true principles 
of representative government, on the sacred rights of 
property, equality, and liberty." " The Revolution is 
ended." So ran the proclamation published by the pro- 
visional government. 

It was a foregone conclusion that Napoleon would be 
named First Consul in the new government which the 
people had ratified. It is no less true that he dictated 
the choice of his two colleagues, — Cambaceres and Le- 
brun. These were men whose ability was not of the 
alarming kind, and who could be relied upon to count 
the stars whenever Napoleon, at midday, should declare 
that it was night. Sieyes was soothed with the gift of 
the fine estate of Crosne, and the presidency of the Sen- 
ate. Roger-Ducos also sank peacefully into the bosom of 
that august, well-paid Assembly. 

It was on Christmas Eve of 1799 that the government 
of the three permanent consuls began ; by the law of its 
creation it was to live for ten years. 

This consular government was a magnificent machine, 
capable of accomplishing wonders when controlled by an 
able ruler. The gist of it was concentration and uniform- 
ity. All the strength of the nation was placed at the dis- 



270 NAPOLEON chap. 

posal of its chief. He could plan and execute, legislate 
and enforce legislation, declare war and marshal armies, 
and make peace. He was master at home and abroad. 
In him was centred France. He laid down her laws, 
fixed her taxes, dictated her system of schools, superin- 
tended her roads and bridges, policed her towns and 
cities, licensed her books, named the number of her 
armies ; pensioned the old, the weak, and the deserving ; 
censored her press, controlled rewards and punishments, 
— his finger ever on the pulse-beat of the nation, his will 
its master, his ideals its inspiration. 

No initiative remained with the people. Political 
liberty was a reminiscence. The town bridge could not 
be rebuilt or the lights of the village changed without 
authority granted from the Consul or his agents. " Con= 
fidence coming from below ; power descending from 
above," was the principle of the new Sieyes sj^stem. 
Under just such a scheme it was possible that it might 
happen that the power of the ruler would continue to 
come down long after the confidence of the subject had 
ceased to go up. 

The Revolution had gone to the extreme limits of 
popular sovereignty by giving to every citizen the ballot, 
to every community the right of local self-government ; 
and to the masses the privilege of electing judicial and 
military as well as political officers. France was said to 
be cut up into forty thousand little republics. The cen- 
tral authority was almost null ,- the local power almost 
absolute. It was this federative system carried to excess 
(as under the Articles of the Confederation in our own 
country) which had made necessary the despotism of 
the Great Committee. The consular constitution was 



sxi FIRST CONSUL 271 

the reverse of this. 'Local government became null, the 
central authority almost absolute. Prefects and sub- 
prefects, appointed by the executive, directed local affairs, 
nominally assisted by local boards, which met once a year. 
Even the mayors held their offices from the central 
power. From the lowest round of the official ladder to 
the highest, was a steady climb of one rung above the 
other. The First Consul was chief, restrained by the 
constitution ; below him, moving at his touch, came all 
the other officers of state. 

Under Napoleon the burden of supporting the State 
rested on the shoulders of the strong. Land, wealth, 
paid the direct taxes ; the customs duties were levied 
mainly upon luxuries, not upon the necessaries of life. 
Prior to the Revolution the taxes of the unprivileged had 
amounted to more than three-fourths of the net produce 
of land and labor. Under the Napoleonic system the 
taxes amounted to less than one-fourth of the net income. 

Before the Revolution the poor man lost fifty-nine days 
out of every year in service to the State by way of tax. 
Three-fifths of the French were in this condition. After 
the Revolution the artisan, mechanic, and day laborer lost 
from nine to sixteen days per year. Before the Revolu- 
tion Champfort could say, "In France seven millions of 
men beg and twelve millions are unable to give anything." 
To the same purport is the testimony of Voltaire that 
one-third of the French people had nothing. 

Under Napoleon an American traveller, Colonel Pink- 
ney could write, " There are no tithes, no church taxes, 
no taxation of the poor. All the taxes together do not 
go beyond one-sixth of a man's rent-roll." 

Before the Revolution the peasant proprietor and 



272 NAPOLEON char 

small farmer, out of 100 francs net income, paid 14 
francs to the seigneur, 14 to the Church, and 53 to 
the State. After Napoleon's rise to power, the same 
farmer out of the same amount of income paid nothing 
to the seigneur, nothing to the Church, very little to the 
State, and only 21 francs to the commune and depart- 
ment. Under the Bourbons such a farmer kept for his 
own use less than 20 francs out of 100 ; under Napoleon 
he kept 79. 

Under the Bourbons the citizen was compelled to buy 
from the government seven pounds of salt every year at 
the price of thirteen sous per pound, for himself and each 
member of liis family. Under Napoleon he bought no 
more than he needed, and the price was two sous per 
pound. 

Under the Bourbons the constant dread of the peasant, 
for centuries, had been Famine — national, universal, hor- 
ribly destructive Famine. With Napoleon's rise to power, 
the spectre passed away ; and, excepting local and acci- 
dental dearths in 1812 and 1817, France heard of Famine 
no more. 

Napoleon believed that each generation should pay 
its own way. He had no grudge against posterity, 
and did not wish to live at its expense. Hence he 
" floated " no loans, issued no bonds, and piled up no 
national debt. 

The best of the Bourbon line, Henry IV., lives in 
kindly remembrance because he wished the time to come 
when the French peasant might, once a week, have a fowl 
for the pot. Compare this with what Lafayette writes 
(in 1800) : " You know how many beggars there were, 
people dying of hunger in our country. We see no more 



XXI FIRST CONSUL 278 

of them. The peasants are richer, the land better tilled, 
and the women better clad." 

Morris Birkbeck, an English traveller, writes, " Every- 
body assures me that the riches and comfort of the 
farmers have been doubled in twenty-five years. 

"From Dieppe to this place, Montpellier, we have not 
seen among the laboring people one such famished, worn- 
out, wretched object as may be met in every parish in 
England, I had almost said on almost every farm. . . . 
A really rich country, and yet there are few rich indi- 
viduals." 

As one reads paragraphs like these, the words of John 
Ruskin come to mind, "Though England is deafened 
with spinning-wheels, her people have no clothes ; though 
she is black with digging coal, her people have no fuel, 
and they die of cold ; and though she has sold her soul 
for gain, they die of hunger ! " 



How the government which was overthrown by Napo- 
leon could have gone on much longer even Mr. Lanfrey 
does not explain. It had neither money nor credit ; the 
very cash box of the opera had been seized to obtain funds 
to forward couriers to the armies. It had neither honesty 
nor capacity. Talleyrand, treating with the American en- 
voys, declined to do business till his hands had been crossed, 
according to custom ; brigands robbed mail coaches in 
the vicinity of Paris ; the public roads and canals were 
almost impassable ; rebellion defied the government in 
La Vendee. The Directory did not even have the simple 
virtue of patriotism ; Barras was sold to the Bourbons, 
and held in his possession letters-patent issued to him 



274 NAPOLEON chap, xxi 

by the Count of Provence, appointing him royal commis- 
sioner to proclaim and reestablish the monarchy. " Had 
I known of the letters-patent on the 18th of Brumaire," 
exclaimed Napoleon afterward, " I would have pinned 
them upon his breast and had him shot." 



CHAPTER XXII 

A LL honor to the ruler who commences his reign by 
words and deeds which suggest that he has somewhere 
heard and heeded the golden text, " Blessed are the 
peacemakers ! " 

There had been riots in France and the clash of faction ; 
there had been massacre of Catholic by Protestant and of 
Protestant by Catholic ; there had been civil war in La 
Vendee. Napoleon had no sooner become master than his 
orders went forth for peace, and a year had not passed 
before quiet reigned from Paris to all the frontiers. 
Royally he pardoned all who would accept his clemency, 
giving life and power to many a secret foe who was to 
help pull him down in the years to come. France tran- 
quillized within, the First Consul turned to the enemies 
without, — to the foreign powers which had combined 
against her. ^^ 

On Christmas Day, December 25, 1799, Napoleon wrote 
to the King of England and to the Emperor of Austria 
nobly worded letters praying that the war might cease. 
Written with his own hand, and addressed personally to 
these monarchs, the question of etiquette is raised by roy- 
alist writers. They contend that letters, so addressed, 
were improper. Think of the coldness of nature which 
would make the lives of thousands of men turn on a piti- 

275 



276 NAPOLEON chap. 

ful point like that ! These letters were not sincere, 
according to Napoleon's detractors. How they come to 
know this, they cannot explain ; but they know it. The 
average reader, not gifted with the acumen of the profes- 
sional detractor, can only be certain of the plain facts of 
the case, and those are, that Napoleon made the first over- 
tures for peace; that his words have the ring of sincerity, 
and the virtue of being positive; and that his conciliatory 
advances were repelled, mildly by Austria, insolently by 
Great Britain. 

So arrogant was the letter of' reply which Grenville, 
the English minister, sent to the French foreign office 
that even George III. disapproved of it. With incredible 
superciliousness the French were told by the English 
aristocrat that they had better restore the Bourbons 
under whose rule France had enjoyed so much prosperity 
at home and consideration abroad. Inasmuch as England 
had but recently despoiled Bourbon France of nearly every 
scrap of territory she had in the world, — Canada, India, 
etc., — Grenville's letter was as stupidly scornful of fact as 
it was of good manners. The Bourbon " glory " which had 
sunk so low that France had not even been invited to the 
feast when Poland was devoured ; so low that the French 
flag had been covered with shameful defeat on land and 
sea, was a subject which might have made even a British 
cabinet officer hesitate before he took the wrong side 
of it. 

The honors of the correspondence remained with Napo- 
leon ; and by way of retort to Grenville's plea, that the 
Bourbons were the legitimate rulers of France, whom the 
people had no right to displace, the surly Englishman 
was reminded that the logic of his argument would bring 



XXII MARENGO 277 

the Stuarts back to the throne of England, from which a 
revolting people had driven them. The truth is that 
Pitt's ministry believed France exhausted. Malta and 
Egypt were both coveted by Great Britain, and it was 
believed that each would soon be lost by France. It 
was for reasons like these that Napoleon's overtures were 
rejected. 

With the Emperor of Russia the First Consul was more 
fortunate. The Czar had not liked the manner in which 
he had been used by his allies, England and Austria. 
In fact, he had been shabbily treated by both. Added to 
this was his dissatisfaction with England because of her 
designs on Malta, in whose fate he took an interest as 
protector of the Knights of St. John. 

Napoleon cleverly played upon the passions of the Czar 
(who was more or less of a lunatic), flattered him by 
releasing the Russian prisoners held by France, and send- 
ing them home in new uniforms. Soon Napoleon had no 
admirer more ardent than the mad autocrat Paul, who 
wrote him a personal letter proposing a joint expedition 
against India. 

Prussia had declared her neutrality. Napoleon sent 
Duroc and a letter to the young King urging an alliance, 
Hamburg being the bait dangled before the Prussian 
monarch's eyes. He was gracious, and he was tempted, 
but he did not yield : Prussia remained neutral. 

Great Britain had good reasons for wishing for the res- 
toration of the Bourbons, from whose feeble hands so 
much of the colonial Empire of France had dropped ; she 
had good reason to believe that a continuation of the war 
would increase her own colonial empire, but the manner 
in which she repelled Napoleon's advances gave to France 



278 NAPOLEON chaf. 

just the insult that was needed to arouse her in passionate 
support of the First Consul. 

Forced to continue the war, his preparations were soon 
made. 



It may be doubted whether any victory that he ever 
won held a higher place in the memory of the great 
captain than that of Marengo. He never ceased to 
recall it as one of the most glorious days of his life. We 
see a proof of this in the Memoirs of General Marbot. 
The year was 1807, the battle of Eylau had been fought, 
the armies were in motion again ; and Lannes, hard- 
pressed by the Russian host at Friedland, had sent his 
aide-de-camp speeding to the Emperor to hurry up 
support. 

" Mounted on my swift Lisette, I met the Emperor 
leaving Eylau. His face was beaming. He made me 
ride up by his side, and as we galloped I had to give him an 
account of what had taken place on the field of battle be- 
fore I had left. The report finished, the Emperor smiled, 
and asked, " Have you a good memory ? " — " Pretty fair, 
sire." — " Well, what anniversary is it to-day, the 14th of 
June?" — "Marengo." — "Yes," replied the Emperor, 
" and I am going to beat the Russians to-day as I beat 
the Austrians at Marengo." And as Napoleon reached 
the field, and rode along the lines, he called out to his 
troops, " It is a lucky day, the anniversary of Marengo!" 
The troops cheered him as he rode, and they won for him 
the great battle of Friedland. 

The old uniform, sabre, spurs, hat, he had worn on 
that sunny day in Italy, in 1800, he scrupulously kept. 



XXII MARENGO 279 

In the year he was crowned Emperor he carried Josephine 
to see the plain he had immortalized, fought again in 
sham fight the battle of Marengo, wearing the faded 
uniform he had worn on that eventful day. 

Even on his last journey to dismal St. Helena, it seems 
that these relics of a glorious past were not forgotten. 
We read that when the dead warrior lay stark and stiff 
in his coffin on that distant rock, they spread over his feet 
"the cloak he had worn at Marengo." 



It was indeed a brilliant campaign, great in conception, 
execution, results. 

Moreau's army lay upon the Rhine, more than one hun- 
dred thousand strong. Massena with the army of Italy 
guarded the Apennines, facing overwhelming odds. From 
Paris the First Consul urged Massena to hold his ground, 
and Moreau to advance. Against the latter was a weak 
Austrian commander, Kray, and forces about equal to the 
French. Much time was lost. Napoleon proposing a plan 
which Moreau thought too bold, and was not willing to 
risk. Finally the First Consul yielded, gave Moreau a 
free hand, and the advance movement began. The 
Rhine was crossed, and Moreau began a series of victories 
over Kray which brought him to the Danube. But the 
Austrians, taking the offensive against the army of Italy, 
cut it in two, and shut up Massena in Genoa, where the 
English fleet could cooperate against the French. 

It was then that Napoleon, almost by stealth, got together 
another army, composed partly of conscripts, partly of veter- 
ans from the armies of La Vendee and Holland, and hurried 
it to the foot of the Alps. The plan was to pass these 



280 NAPOLEON chap. 

mountains, fall upon the Austrian rear, and redeem Italy 
at a blow. His enemies heard of the Army of the Reserve 
which he was collecting at Dijon. Spies went there, saw 
a few thousand raw recruits, and reported that Napoleon 
had no Army of Reserve — that he was merely trying to 
bluff old Melas into loosening his grip on Genoa. It 
suited Napoleon precisely to have his new army treated 
as a joke. With consummate art he encouraged the jest 
while he collected, drilled, and equipped at different 
points the various detachments with which he intended 
to march. 

Under the constitution the First Consul could not 
legally command the army. He was not forbidden, how- 
ever, to be present as an interested spectator while some 
one else commanded. So he appointed Berthier, General- 
in-chief. 

Early in May, 1800, all was ready, and the First Consul 
left Paris to become the interested spectator of the move- 
ments of the Army of the Reserve. At the front, form and 
fiction gave way to actuality, and Napoleon's word was 
that of chief. At four different passes the troops entered 
the mountains, the main army crossing by the Great St. 
Bernard. 

Modern students, who sit in snug libraries and rectify 
the arduous campaigns of the past, have discovered that 
Napoleon's passage of the Alps was no great thing after 
all. They say that his troops had plenty to eat, drink, 
and wear ; thousands of mules and peasants to aid in the 
heavy work of the march ; no foes to fight on the way ; 
and that his march was little more than a military parade. 
Indeed, it was one of those things which looked a deal easier 
after it had been done than before. And jet it must have 



ixii MARENGO 281 

been a notable feat to have scaled those mighty barriers on 
which lay the snow, to have threaded those paths up in the 
air over which the avalanche hung, and below which the 
precipice yawned — all this having been done with such 
speed that the French were in Italy before the Austrians 
knew they had left France. Much of the route was 
along narrow ledges where the shepherd walked warily. 
To take a fully equipped army over these rocky shelves, 
— horse, foot, artillery, ammunition, supplies, — seems 
even at this admire-nothing day to have been a triumph 
of organization, skill, foresight, and hardihood. Only a 
few months previously a Russian army, led by Suwarow, 
had ventured to cross the Alps — and had crossed ; but 
only half of them got out alive. 

In less than a week the French made good the daring 
attempt, and were in the valleys of Italy marching upon 
the Austrian rear. They had brought cavalry and infan- 
try almost without loss. Cannon had been laid in hollowed 
logs and pulled up by ropes. The little fort of Bard, 
stuck right in the road out of the mountains, had, for a 
moment, threatened the whole enterprise with ruin. Na- 
poleon had known of the fortress, but had underrated its 
importance. For some hours a panic seemed imminent in 
the vanguard, but a goat-path was found which led past 
the fort on rocks higher up. The cannon were slipped 
by at night, over the road covered with litter. 

Remaining on the French side to despatch the troops 
forward as rapidly as possible. Napoleon was one of the 
last to enter the mountains. He rode a sure-footed mule, 
and by his side walked his guide, a young peasant who 
unbosomed himself as they went forward. This peasant, 
also, had his eyes on the future, and wished to rise in 



282 NAPOLEON chap. 

the world. His heart yearned for a farm in the Alps, 
where he might pasture a small flock, grow a few neces- 
saries, marry a girl he loved, and live happily ever after- 
ward. The traveller on the mule seemed much absorbed 
in thought ; but, nevertheless, he heard all the moun- 
taineer was saying. 

He gave to the young peasant the funds wherewith to 
buy house and land ; and when Napoleon's empire had 
fallen to pieces, the family of his old-time guide yet dwelt 
contentedly in the home the First Consul had given. 

So completely had Napoleon hoodwinked the Austrians 
that the Army of the Reserve was still considered a 
myth. Mountain passes where a few battalions could 
have vanquished an army had been left unguarded ; and 
when the French, about sixty thousand strong, stood 
upon the Italian plains, Melas could with difficulty be 
made to believe the news. 

Now that he was in Italy, it would seem that Napoleon 
should have relieved Genoa, as he had promised. Mas- 
sena and his heroic band were there suffering all the tor- 
tures of war, of famine, and of pestilence. But Napoleon 
had conceived a grander plan. To march upon Genoa, 
fighting detachments of Austrians as he went, and going 
from one hum-drum victory to another was too common- 
place. Napoleon wished to strike a blow which would 
annihilate the enemy and astound the world. So he 
deliberately left Massdna's army to starve while he him- 
self marched upon Milan. One after another, Lannes, 
leading the vanguard, beat the Austrian detachments 
which opposed his progress, and Napoleon entered Milan 
in triumph. 

Here he spent several days in festivals and ceremonials, 



XXII MARENGO 283 

lapping himself in the luxury of boundless adulation. 
In the meantime he threw his forces upon the rear of 
Melas, spreading a vast net around that brave but almost 
demoralized commander. 

On June 4 Massena consented to evacuate Genoa. His 
troops, after having been fed by the Austrians, marched 
off to join the French in Italy. Thus, also, a strong Aus- 
trian force was released, and it hastened to join Melas. 

When Bourrienne went into Napoleon's room late at 
niglit, June 8, and shook him out of a sound sleep to 
announce that Genoa had fallen, he refused at first to 
believe it. But he immediately rose, and in a short 
while orders were flying in all directions, changing the 
dispositions of the army. 

On June 9, Lannes, with the aid of Victor, who came 
up late in the day, won a memorable victory at Monte- 
bello. J 

Napoleon, who had left Milan and taken up a strong 
position at Stradella, was in a state of the utmost anxiety, 
fearing that Melas was about to escape the net. The 
10th and 11th of June passed without any definite infor- 
mation of the Austrian movements. On the 12th of June 
his impatience became so great that he abandoned his 
position at Stradella and advanced to the heights of 
Tortona. On the next day he passed the Scrivia and 
entered the plain of Marengo, and drove a small Austrian 
force from the village. Napoleon was convinced that 
Melas had escaped, and it is queer commentary upon the 
kind of scouting done at the time that the whereabouts 
of the Austrian army was totally unknown to the French, 
although the two were but a few miles apart. Leaving 
Victor in possession of the village of Marengo, and plac- 



284 NAPOLEON chap. 

ing Lannes on the plain, Napoleon started back to head- 
quarters at Voghera. By a lucky chance the Scrivia had 
overflowed its banks, and he could not cross. Thus he 
remained near enough to Marengo to repair his terrible 
mistake in concluding that Melas meant to shut himself 
up in Genoa. Desaix, just returned from Egypt, reached 
headquarters June 11, and was at once put in command 
of the Boudet division. On June 13 Desaix was ordered 
to march upon Novi, by which route Melas would have 
to pass to Genoa. 

Thus on the eve of one of the most famous battles in 
history, the soldier who won it was completely at fault as 
to the position and the purpose of his foe. His own army 
was widely scattered, and it was only by accident that he 
was within reach of the point where the blow fell. The 
staff-officer whom he had sent to reconnoitre, had reported 
that the Austrians were not in possession of the bridges 
over the Bormida. In fact they were in possession of 
these bridges, and at daybreak, June 14, they began to 
pour across them with the intention of crushing the weak 
French forces at Marengo and of breaking through Napo- 
leon's net. About thirty-six thousand Austrians fell upon 
the sixteen thousand French. Victor was driven out of the 
village, and by ten o'clock in the morning his troops were 
in disorderly retreat. The superb courage of Lannes stayed 
the rout. With the utmost firmness he held his troops in 
hand, falling back slowly and fighting desperately as he 
retired. At full speed Napoleon came upon the field, 
bringing the consular guard and Monnier's division. 
Couriers had already been sent to bring Desaix back to 
the main army ; but before these messengers reached him, 
he had heard the cannonade, guessed that Melas had 



XXII MARENGO 286 

struck the French at Marengo, and at once set his col- 
umns in motion toward the field of battle. 

Napoleon's presence, his reenforcements, his skilful dis- 
positions, had put new life into the struggle ; but as the 
morning wore away, and the afternoon commenced, it was 
evident that the Austrians would win. The French 
gave way at all points, and in parts of the field the rout 
was complete. Napoleon sat by the roadside swishing 
his riding-whip and calling to the fugitives who passed 
him to stop ; but their flight continued. A commercial 
traveller left the field and sped away to carry the news to 
Paris that Napoleon had suffered a great defeat. 

Melas, oppressed by age and worn out by the heat and 
fatigue of the day, thought the battle won ; went to his 
headquarters to send off despatches to that effect, and left 
to his subordinate, Zach, the task of the pursuit. But 
Desaix had come — " the battle is lost, but there is time to 
gain another." 

Only twelve pieces of artillery were left to the French. 
Marmont massed these, and opened on the dense Aus- 
trian column advancing en echelon along the road. 
Desaix charged, and almost immediately got a ball in 
the breast and died "a soldier's beautiful death." But 
his troops pressed forwaxd with fury, throwing back in 
confusion the head of the Austrian column. At this 
moment, " in the very nick of time " as Napoleon himself 
admitted to Bourrienne, Kellermann made his famous 
cavalry charge on the flank of the Austrian column, cut 
it in two, and decided the day. The French lines every- 
where advanced, the Austrians broke. They were bewil- 
dered at the sudden change : they had no chief, Zach 
being a prisoner, and Melas absent. In wildest confusion 



286 NAPOLEON chap. 

they fled toward the bridges over the Bormida, Austrian 
horse trampling Austrian foot, and the French in hot 
pursuit. 

Some sixteen thousand men were killed or wounded in 
this bloody battle, and very nearly half of these were 
French. But the Austrians were demoralized, and Melas 
so overcome that he hastened to treat. To save the relics 
of his army, he was willing to abandon northern Italy, 
give up Genoa, and all fortresses recently taken. 

From the field of Marengo, surrounded by so many 
dead and mangled, Napoleon wrote a long letter to the 
Emperor of Austria, urgently pleading for a general 
peace. 

Returning to Milan, he was welcomed with infinite 
enthusiasm. He spent some days there reestablishing 
the Cisalpine republic, reorganizing the administration, 
and putting himself in accord with the Roman Catholic 
Church. Just as earnestly as he had assured the Mahom- 
etans in Egypt that his mission on earth was to crush 
the Pope and lower the Cross, he now set himself up as 
the restorer of the Christian religion. He went in state 
to the cathedral of Milan to appear in a clerical pag- 
eant ; and he took great pains to have it published abroad 
that the priests might rely upon him for protection. 

Leaving Massena in command of the army of Italy, 
Napoleon returned to Paris by way of Lyons. The ova- 
tions which greeted him were .as spontaneous as they were 
hearty. Never before, never afterward, did his presence 
call forth such universal, sincere, and joyous applause. 
He was still young, still the first magistrate of a republic, 
still conciliatory and magnetic, still posing as a public 
servant who could modestly write that " he hoped France 



XXII MARENGO 287 

would be satisfied with its army." He was not yet the 
all-absorbing egotist who must be everything. Moreau 
was still at the head of an array, Carnot at the war office, 
there was a tribunate which could debate governmental 
policies ; there was a public opinion which could not be 
openly braved. 

Hence it was a national hero whom the French wel- 
comed home, not a master before whom flatterers fawned. 
All Paris was illuminated from hut to palace. Thousands 
pressed forward but to see him ; the Tuileries were sur- 
rounded by the best people of Paris, all eager to catch a 
glimpse of him at a window, and greeting him wherever 
he appeared with rapturous shouts. He himself was 
deeply touched, and said afterward that these were the 
happiest days of his life. The time was yet to come 
when he would appear at these same windows to answer 
the shouts of a few boys and loafers, on the dreary days 
before Waterloo. 

With that talent for effect which was one of Napoleon's 
most highly developed traits, he had ordered the Consular 
Guard back to France almost immediately after Marengo, 
timing its march so that it would arrive in Paris on the 
day of the great national fete of July 14. On that day 
when so many thousands of Frenchmen, dressed in gala 
attire, thronged the Field of Mars and gave themselves 
up to rejoicings, the column from Marengo, dust-cov- 
ered, clad in their old uniform, and bearing their smoke- 
begrimed, bullet-rent banners, suddenly entered the vast 
amphitheatre. The effect was el'ectrical. Shout upon 
shout greeted the returning heroes ; and with an uncon- 
trollable impulse the people rushed upon these veterans 
from Italy with every demonstration of joy, affection, and 



288 NAPOLEON chap. 

wild enthusiasm. So great was the disorder that the regu- 
lar programme of the day was tlirust aside ; the men of 
Marengo had dwarfed every other attraction. 

About this time the Bourbons made efforts to persuade 
Napoleon to play the part of Monk in restoring the mon- 
archy. Suasive priests bearing letters, and lovely women 
bearing secret offers, were employed, the facile Josephine 
lending herself gracefully to the intrigue. The First 
Consul was the last of men to rake chestnuts out of the 
fire for other people, and the Bourbons were firmly ad- 
vised to accept a situation which left them in exile. 

Failing in their efforts to bribe him, the monarchists 
determined to kill him ; and the more violent Jacobins, 
seeing his imperial trend, were equally envenomed. It 
was the latter faction which made the first attempt upon 
his life. The Conspiracy of Ceracchi, Arena, and Topino- 
Lebrun was betrayed to the police. Ceracchi was an Ital- 
ian sculptor who had modelled a bust of Napoleon. 
Arena was a Corsican whose brother had aimed a knife at 
Napoleon on the 19th of Brumaire. Topino-Lebrun was 
the juryman who had doubted the guilt of Danton, and 
who had been bullied into voting death by the painter 
David. They were condemned and executed. 

A yet more dangerous plot was that of the royalists. 
An infernal machine was contrived by which Napoleon 
,was to have been blown up while on his way to the 
opera. The explosion occurred, but a trifle too late. 
Napoleon had just passed. The man in charge of the 
machine did not know Josephine's carriage from Napo- 
leon's, and approached too near in the effort to make 
certain. A guard kicked him away, and while he was 
recovering himself Napoleon's coachman drove furiously 



XXII MARENGO 289 

round the corner. A sound like thunder was heard, 
many houses were shattered, many people killed and 
wounded. 

" Drive on ! " shouted Napoleon ; and when he entered 
his box at the opera, he looked as if nothing had occurred. 
" The rascals tried to blow me up," he said coolly as he 
took his seat and called for an opera-book. But when he 
returned to the Tuileries he was in a rage, and violently 
accused the Jacobins of being the authors of the plot. 
Fouche in vain insisted that the royalists were the guilty 
parties; the First Consul refused to listen. Taking 
advantage of the feeling aroused in his favor by the 
attempts to assassinate him, he caused a new tribunal 
to be created, composed of eight judges, who were to try 
political offenders without jury, and without appeal or 
revision. By another law he was empowered to banish 
without trial such persons as he considered "enemies of 
the State." One hundred and thirty of the more violent 
republicans were banished to the penal colonies. 

For the purpose of feeling the public pulse, a pam- 
phlet was put forward by Fontanes and Lucien Bona- 
parte, called a " Parallel between Caesar, Cromwell, Monk, 
and Bonaparte." It was hinted that supreme power 
should be vested in Napoleon, that he should be made 
king. The pear was not quite ripe, the pamphlet created 
a bad effect. Napoleon, who had undoubtedly encouraged 
its publication, promptly repudiated it ; and Lucien, 
dismissed from his office as Secretary of the Interior, 
was sent to Spain as ambassador. 



However willing Austria might be for peace, she could 



290 NAPOLEON chap. 

not make it without the consent of England, her ally. 
The British ministry viewed with the spirit of philosophy 
the crushing blows which France had dealt Austria, and, 
secure from attack themselves, encouraged Austria to 
keep on fighting. Not able to send troops, England 
sent money. With $10,000,000 she bought the further 
use of German soldiers to keep France employed on the 
Continent, while Great Britain bent her energies to the 
capture of Malta and of Egypt. Thus it happened that 
the armistice expired without a treaty having been agreed 
on ; and the war between the Republic and the Empire 
recommenced (November, 1800). Brune defeated the 
Austrians on the Mincio ; Macdonald made the heroic 
march through the Spliigen Pass ; Moreau won the mag- 
nificent victory of Hohenlinden (December 4, 1800). 

It seems that, with a little more dash, Moreau might 
have taken Vienna, exposed as it was to the march of 
three victorious armies. But Austria asked for a truce, 
gave pledges of good faith, and the French halted. On 
February 9, 1801, the Peace of Luneville put an end to 
the war. France had won the boundary of the Rhine ; 
and, in addition to the territory made hers by the treaty 
of Campo Formio, gained Tuscany, which Napoleon 
had promised to Spain, in exchange for Louisiana. 

Napoleon's position on the Continent was now very 
strong. Prussia was a friendly neutral ; Spain an ally ; 
Italy and Switzerland little more than French provinces ; 
the Batavian republic and Genoa submissive subjects ; 
Portugal in his power by reason of his compact with 
Spain ; and the Czar of Russia an enthusiastic friend. 
England was shut out from the Continent almost com- 
pletely. 



XXII MARENGO 291 

Her insolent exercise of the right of search of neutral 
vessels on the high seas, a right which had no basis in 
law or justice, had provoked the hatred of the world, and 
Napoleon took advantage of this feeling and of Russia's 
friendship to reorganize the armed neutrality of the 
northern powers for the purpose of bringing England 
to reason. Her reply was brutal and effective. She 
sent her fleet, under Parker and Nelson, to bombard Co- 
penhagen and to destroy the Danish navy. The work 
was savagely done, and the northern league shattered. 
The English party at St. Petersburg followed up this 
blow by the murder of the Czar Paul. Hardl}"^ had the 
young Alexander been proclaimed before he announced 
his adhesion to the English and his antagonism to the 
French. He may, possibly, have been free from the 
guilt of conniving at his father's murder; but it is 
not to be denied that he continued to reward with 
the highest offices the chief assassins — - Bennigsen, for 
example. 



Kleber, who had gloriously maintained himself in Egypt, 
was assassinated on the day of Marengo. It is one of the 
mysteries of Napoleon's career that he allowed the incom- 
petent Menou to succeed to a command where so much 
executive and administrative ability was required. One 
is tempted to think that even at this early date the genius 
of Napoleon was overtaxed. In trying to do so many 
things, he neglected some. Egypt he certainly tried to 
relieve by sending reenforcements ; but he slurred all, 
neglected all, and lost all, by allowing so notorious an im- 
becile as Menou to remain in chief command. Why he 



292 NAPOLEON cha». 

did not appoint Reynier or Lanusse, both of whom were 
already in Egypt, or why he did not send some good offi- 
cer from France, can only be explained upon the theory 
that his mind was so much preoccupied with other matters 
that he failed to attach due importance to the situation of 
the Army of the East. 

Menou's administration was one dreary chapter of stu- 
pidities ; and when the English landed at Alexandria, 
they found an easy conquest. With little effort and little 
bloodshed the French were beaten in detail, and agreed 
to quit the country. 

When the tidings reached Napoleon, his anger and 
chagrin were extreme. He jumped upon his horse and 
dashed off into the forest of Bougival as if the furies 
were after him. Hour after hour he rode frantically in 
the wood, to the wonder of his staff, who could not guess 
what it was all about. At last, when the storm had 
spent itself, he unbosomed himself to the faithful Junot. 
That night Junot said to his wife, " Ah, my General suf- 
fered cruelly to-day : Egypt has been taken by the Eng- 
lish ! " 

Malta having been captured also, Napoleon had the 
mortification of realizing that his expedition to the East 
had had no other result than to sow seed for an English 
harvest. 

However, Great Britain was dismayed at the increase 
of her public debt, oppressed by the load of taxation, 
and somewhat intimidated by the energy which Napoleon 
began to show in building up the French navy. A mon- 
ster demonstration at Boulogne, — where he gathered an 
immense number of armed sloops, apparently for the pur- 
pose of invading England, — and the failure of an attack 



XXII MARENGO 283 

which Nelson made on this flotilla, had an effect; and 
in March, 1802, to the joy of the world, the Peace of 
Amiens was signed. 

For the first time since 1792 universal peace prevailed 
in Europe. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

VrOTHING but memories now remains to France, or to 
the human race, of the splendors of Marengo, of Aus- 
terlitz, Jena, and Wagram ; but the work which Napoleon 
did while Europe allowed him a few years of peace will 
endure for ages. Had the Treaty of Amiens been lasting, 
had England kept faith, had the old world dynasties been 
willing to accept at that time those necessary changes 
which have since cost so much labor, blood, and treasure. 
Napoleon might have gone down to history, not as the 
typical fighter of modern times, but as the peerless devel- 
oper, organizer, administrator, and lawgiver. In his 
many-sided character there was the well-rounded man of 
peace, who delighted in improvement, in embellishment, 
in the growth of commerce, agriculture, and manufactures ; 
in the progress of art, science, and literature ; in the 
thorough training of the young, the care of the weaker 
members of society, the just administration of wise laws, 
the recognition of merit of all kinds. The orderly march 
of the legions of industry was no less satisfying to him 
than the march of armies. We have read so much of his 
battles that we have come to think of him as a man who 
was never so happy as when at war. This view is super- 
ficial and incorrect. It appears that he was never more 
energetic, capable, effective, never more at ease, never 

294 



CHAP, xxiii THE CODE NAPOL]fcON 295 

more cheerful, contented, kind, and magnetic than in the 
work connected with his schools, hospitals, public monu- 
ments, public improvements of all sorts, the codification of 
the laws, the encouragement and development of the 
various industries of France. No trophy of any of his 
campaigns did he exhibit with more satisfaction than he 
took in showing to visitors a piece of sugar made by 
Frenchmen from the beet — a triumph of home industry 
due largely to his stimulating impulse. 

In all such matters his interest was intelligent, per- 
sistent, and intense. Few were the months given to him 
in which to devote himself to such labor; but he took 
enormous strides in constructing a new system for France 
which worked wonders for her, and which has had its 
influence throughout the civilized world. 

The men of the Revolution had sketched a grand 
scheme of state education, but it remained a sketch. 
Napoleon studied their scheme, improved it, adopted it, 
and put it into successf al operation. His thorough system 
of instruction, controlled by the State, from the primary 
schools to the Lyceums and the Technological Institute 
remain in France to-day substantially as he left them. 

Under the Directory society had become disorganized 
and morals corrupt. Napoleon, hard at work on finance, 
laws, education, military and civil administration, inaugu- 
rated the reform of social abuses also. With his removal 
to the Tuileries, February 1800, may be dated the recon- 
struction of society in France. The beginnings of a court 
formed about him, and into this circle the notoriously 
immoral women could not enter. It must have been a 
cruel surprise to Madame Tallien — coming to visit her old 
friend Josephine — when the door was shut in her face 



296 NAPOLEON chap. 

by the usher. Of course it was by Napoleon's command 
that this was done, never by Josephine's. Applying 
similar rules to the men, Napoleon compelled Talleyrand 
to marry the woman with whom he openly lived ; and 
even the favorite Berthier, too scandalously connected 
with Madame Visconti, was made to take a wife. Sternly 
frowning upon all flaunting immoralities, the First Con- 
sul's will power and example so impressed itself upon the 
nation that the moral tone of society throughout the land 
was elevated, and a loftier moral standard fixed. 

Under the Directory the material well-being of the 
country, internally, had been so neglected that even the 
waterways fell into disuse. Under the consular govern- 
ment the French system of internal improvements soon 
began to excite the admiration of Europe. Englishmen, 
coming over after the peace, and expecting to see what 
their editors and politicians had described as a country 
ruined by revolution, were amazed to see that in many 
directions French progress could give England useful 
lessons. Agriculture had doubled its produce, for the 
idle lands of former grandees had been put into cultiva- 
tion. The farmer was more prosperous, for the lord was 
not on the lookout to seize the crop with feudal dues as 
soon as made. Nor was the priest seen standing at the 
gate, grabbing a tenth of everything. Nor were state 
taxes levied with an eye single to making the burden as 
heavy as peasant shoulders could bear. 

Wonder of wonders ! the man in control had said, 
and kept saying, " Better to let the peasant keep what he 
makes than to lock it up in the public treasury ! " The 
same man said, " Beautify the markets, render them clean, 
attractive, healthy — they are the Louvres of the common 



ixiii THE CODE NAP0LI:0N 297 

people." It was such a man who would talk with the 
poor whenever he could, to learn the facts of their condi- 
tion. In his stroll he would stop, chat with the farmer, 
and, taking the plough in his own white hands, trace a 
wobbly furrow. 

Commerce was inspired to new efforts, for the First 
Consul put himself forward as champion of liberty of the 
seas, combatting England's harsh policy of searching neu- 
tral vessels and seizing goods covered by the neutral flag. 

Manufactures he encouraged to the utmost of his power, 
by shutting off foreign competition, by setting the exam- 
ple of using home-made goods, and by direct subsidies. 
He even went so far as to experiment with the govern- 
ment warehouse plan, advancing money out of the treas- 
ury to the manufactures on the deposit of products of the 
mills. 

No drone, be he the haughtiest Montmorency, whose 
ancestor had been in remote ages a murderer and a thief, 
could hold office under Napoleon. Unless he were will- 
ing to work, he could not enter into the hive. For the 
first time in the political life of the modern French, men 
became prouder of the fact that they were workers, doers 
of notable deeds, than that they were the fifteenth cousin 
of some spindle-shanked duke whose great-great-grand- 
father had held the stirrup when Louis XIII. had strad- 
dled his horse. 

Having founded the Bank of France, January, 1800, Na- 
poleon jealously scrutinized its management, controlled its 
operations, and made it useful to the State as well as to 
the bankers. He watched the quotations of government 
securities, took pride in seeing them command high prices, 
and considered it a point of honor that they should not 



298 NAPOLEON chap. 

fall below eighty. When they dropped considerably 
below that figure, some years later, the Emperor went 
into the market, made " a campaign against the Bears," 
and forced the price up again — many a crippled bear 
limping painfully off the lost field. 

The First Consul also elaborated a system of state educa- 
tion. Here he was no Columbus, no creator, no original 
inventor. His glory is that he accomplished what others 
had suggested, had attempted, but had not done. He 
took hold, gave the scheme the benefit of his tremendous 
driving force, and pushed it through. It will be his glory 
forever that in all things pertaining to civil life he was 
the highest type of democrat. Distinctions of character, 
merit, conduct, talent, he could understand ; distinctions 
of mere birth he abhorred. The very soul of his system 
was the rewarding of worth. In the army, the civil ser- 
vice, the schools, in art and science and literature, his 
great object was to discover the real men, — the men of 
positive ability, — and to open to these the doors of pre- 
ferment. 

Remembering the sufferings he and his sister had 
endured at the Bourbon schools where the poor scholars 
were cruelly humiliated, he founded his training-schools, 
military and civil, upon the plan which as a boy he had 
sketched. The young men at his military academies 
kept no troops of servants, and indulged in no hurtful 
luxury. They not only attended to their own personal 
needs, but fed, curried, and saddled their own horses. 

It was such a man as Napoleon who would turn from 
state business to examine in person an ambitious boy 
who had been studying at home for admission into one 
of the state schools, and who had been refused because 



Mill THE CODE NAPOL:feON 299 

he had not studied under a professor. " This boy is com- 
petent ; let him enter the school," wrote Napoleon after 
the examination : and the young man's career was safe. 

It was such a man who would invite the grenadiers to 
the grand banquets at the palace, and who would direct 
that special courtesies should be shown these humblest 
of the guests. 

It was such a man who would read every letter, every 
petition addressed to him, and find time to answer all. 
Never too proud or too busy to hear the cry of the 
humblest, to reward the merit of the obscurest, to redress 
the grievance of the weakest, he was the man to make 
the highest headed general in the army — Vandamme 
hiras'elf, for instance, — apologize to the obscure cap- 
tain who had been wantonly insulted. Any private 
in the ranks — the drummer boy, the grenadier — was 
free to step out and speak to Napoleon, and was sure 
to be heard as patiently as Talleyrand or Murat or Cam- 
, baceres in the palace. If any difference was made, it 
was in favor of the private soldier. Any citizen, male or 
female, high or low, could count with absolute certainty 
ou reaching Napoleon in person or by petition in writing, 
and upon a reply being promptly given. One day a care- 
less secretary mislaid one of these prayers of the lowly, 
and the palace was in terror at Napoleon's wrath until 
the paper was found. Josephine might take a petition, 
smile sweetly on the supplicant, forget all about it, and 
suavely assure the poor dupe when meeting him next 
that his case was being considered. Not so Napoleon. 
He might not do the sweet smile, he might refuse the 
request, but he would give the man his answer, and if his 
prayers were denied, would tell him why. 



300 NAPOLEON chap. 

The Revolution having levelled all ranks, there were 
no visible marks of distinction between man and man. 
Napoleon was too astute a politician not to pander to 
mankind's innate craving for outward tokens of supe- 
riority. The Legion of Honor was created against stub- 
born opposition, to reward with ribbons, buttons, and 
pensions those who had distinguished themselves by 
their own efforts in any walk of life. It embraced 
merit of every kind, — civil, military, scientific, literary, 
artistic. Men of all creeds, of every rank, every calling, 
were eligible. The test of fitness for membership was 
meritorious service to the State. Such at least was 
Napoleon's theory : whether he or any one else ever 
strictly hewed to so rigid a line may be doubted. His 
order of nobility had this merit : it was not hereditary, 
it carried no special privileges, it could not build up a 
caste, it kept alive the idea that success must be founded 
upon worth, not birth. In theory such an order of 
nobility was democratic to the core. Lafayette, whom 
Napoleon had freed from captivity, recalled to France, 
and reinstated in his ancestral domain, scornfully de- 
clined to enter this new order of nobility. So did many 
others — some because they were royalists, some because 
they were republicans. In a few years the institution 
had become so much a part of national life that the 
restored Bourbons dared not abolish it. 



" I will go down to posterity with the Code in my 
hand," said Napoleon with just pride, for time has proven 
that as a lawgiver, a modern Justinian, his work has 
endured. 



ixiii THE CODE NAPOLEON 301 

Early in liis consulate he began the great labor of codi- 
fying the laws of France, — a work which had often been 
suggested, and which the Convention had partially fin- 
ished, but which had never been completed. 

To realize the magnitude of the undertaking, we must 
bear in mind that, under the Old Order, there were all 
sorts of law and all kinds of courts. What was right in 
one province was wrong in another. A citizen who was 
familiar with the system in Languedoc would have found 
himself grossly ignorant in Brittany. Roman law, feudal 
law, royal edicts, local customs, seigniorial mandates, mu- 
nicipal practices, varied and clashed throughout the realm. 
The Revolution had prostrated the old system and had 
proposed to establish one uniform, modern, and equitable 
code of law for the whole country; but the actual carry- 
ing out of the plan was left to Napoleon. 

Calling to his aid the best legal talent of the land, the 
First Consul set to work. Under his supervision the 
huge task was completed, after the steady labor of several 
years. The Civil Code and the Code of Civil Procedure, 
the Criminal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure, 
were the four parts of the completed system, which, 
adopted in France, followed the advance of the Empire 
and still constitutes the law of a large portion of the 
civilized world. 

Every statute passed under Napoleon's eye. He pre- 
sided over the meetings when the finished work of the 
codifiers came up for sanction, and his suggestions, rea- 
soning, experience, and natural wisdom left their impress 
upon every page. " Never did we adjourn," said one of 
the colaborers of Napoleon, " without learning something 
we had not known before." 



302 NAPOLEON chap. 

It is the glory of this Code that it put into final and 
permanent shape the best work of the Revolution. It 
was based upon the great principle that all citizens were 
legally equals ; that primogeniture, hereditary nobility, 
class privileges, and exemptions were unjust ; that property 
was sacred ; that conscience was free ; that state employ- 
ment should be open to all, opportunities equal to all, 
state duties and state burdens the same to all; that laws 
should be simple, and legal proceedings public, swift, cheap, 
and just ; and that personal liberty, civil right, should be 
inviolable. 

Recognizing his right as master-builder, his persistence, 
zeal, active cooperation in the actual work, and the 
modern tone which he gave to it, the world does him no 
more than justice in calling it the Code Napoleon. 

Another great distinctive work of the First Consul is 
the Concordat ; and here his claim to approval must ever 
remain a question. Those who believe that the State 
should unite with the Church and virtually deny to pos- 
terity the right to investigate the most important of sub- 
jects, will always strain the language of praise in giving 
thanks to Napoleon for the Concordat. On the contrary, 
those who believe that the State should not unite with the 
hierarchy of any creed, but should let the question of 
religion alone, — leave it to be settled by each citizen for 
himself, — will forever condemn the Concordat as the co- 
lossal mistake of Napoleon's career. 

It will be remembered that the Revolution had confis- 
cated the enormous, ill-gotten, and ill-used wealth of the 
Catholic Church, but in lieu of this source of revenue 
had provided ample salaries to the clergy, to be paid from 
the public treasury. It is not true that the Christian 



XXIII THE CODE NAPOLEON 303 

worship was forbidden or religion abolished. Through- 
out the Reign of Terror the Catholic Church continued 
to be a state institution. Only those priests who refused 
to take the oath of allegiance to the New Order were 
treated as criminals. It was not till September, 1794, 
that the Convention abolished the salaries paid by the 
State, thus separating Church and State. After this all 
creeds were on a level, and each citizen could voluntarily 
support that which he preferred, — Catholic, Protestant, 
or the Theophilanthropist. 

It was the princely bishop, archbishop, and cardinal 
who had brought reproach upon the Church under the Old 
Regime ; it was the humble parish priest who had main- 
tained some hold upon the love and the respect of the 
people. When the Revolution burst upon the land, it 
was the prince of the Church who fled to foreign shores ; 
it was the parish priest who remained at the post of duty. 
Bravely taking up the cross where the cardinals and 
bishops had dropped it, the cures reorganized their 
Church, pledged themselves to the new order of things, 
and throughout France their constitutional Church was 
at work — a voluntary association, independent of Rome, 
and supporting itself without help from the State. In 
one very essential particular it stood nearer to the Christ 
standard than the Church it replaced — it charged no fees 
for administering the sacraments. 

This revived Gallican Church was distasteful to Na- 
poleon, for he wished the State, the executive, to be the 
head, centre, and controlling power of everything. Vol- 
untary movements of all sorts were his aversion. 

To the Pope this independent Gallican Church was 
a menace, an impertinence, a revolt. Catholicism, be it 



,304 NAPOLEON chap. 

never so pure in creed, must yield obedience and lucre to 
Rome, else it savors of heresy, schism, and dire sinfulness. 

Again, to the Pope and to the princes of the Church 
this equality among the denominations in France was a 
matter that was almost intolerable. Where creeds stand 
on the same footing, they will compete for converts ; 
where there is room for competition, there is license for 
investigation, debate, reason, and common sense. And 
we have the word of Leo XIII., echoing that of so many 
of his predecessors, that religion has no enemy so subtle, 
so much to be dreaded, so much needing to be ruthlessly 
crushed, as reason, investigation. 

The Pope of Napoleon's day held this view, as a matter 
of course ; and in order to bring about a renewal of the 
union between the Catholic Church and the government 
of France he was ready to concede almost anything Na- 
poleon might demand. Once the union had been accom- 
plished, no matter on what terms, the papacy would feel 
safe. Evolution and time would work marvels ; the 
essential thing was to bring about the union. Napoleon 
was mortal, he would die some day, and weaker men 
would succeed him — a stronger would never appear. 
Let the Pope bend a little to that imperious will, let con- 
cessions be made while the Church was getting fulcrum 
for its lever. Once adjusted, the lever would do the 
rest. So it appeared from the point of view of the Pope : 
time has proven him right. 

On the part of Napoleon there were reasons of policy 
which lured him into the toils of Rome. Immense re- 
sults, immediate and personal, would follow his compact 
with the Pope ; for these he grasped, leaving the future 
to take care of itself. 



XXIII THE CODE NAPOLEON 806 

For Napoleon was personally undergoing a great trans- 
formation. Gradually his mind had filled with dreams of 
empire. The cannon of Marengo had hardly ceased to 
echo before he began to speak of "My beautiful France." 
Between himself and those about him he steadily in- 
creased the distance. His tone was that of Master. Tus- 
cany having been taken from Austria, he made a kingdom 
out of it, put a feeble Bourbon upon its throne, dubbed 
the puppet King of Etruria, and brought him to Paris 
where the people of France could behold a king playing 
courtier to a French consul. At the Tuileries the cere- 
mony and royalty encroached constantly upon republican 
forms, and the lip service of flatterers began to displace 
military frankness and democratic independence. 

Looking forward to supreme power. Napoleon was too 
astute a politician to neglect the priest. As Alexander 
had bent his head in seeming reverence at altars, and lis- 
tened with apparent faith to Grecian oracles ; as Csesar 
had posed as Roman chief priest, and leagued himself to 
paganism; so Napoleon, who had been a Mussulman at 
Cairo, would now become a Catholic in Paris. It was a 
matter of policy, nothing more. 

" Ah, General," said Lafayette to him, " what you want 
is that the little vial should be broken over your head." 

It all led up to that. 

Monarchy was to be restored, and its natural supports 
— the aristocrat and the priest — were needed to give it 
strength. By coming to terms with the Pope, Napoleon 
would win, and the Bourbons lose, the disciplined hosts 
of the Catholic Church. 

Therefore the Concordat was negotiated, and the French 
Church, which even under the Bourbons had enjoyed a 



306 NAPOLEON chap. 

certain amount of independence, was put under the feet 
of the Italian priest, under the tyranny of Rome. 

By this compact the Pope held to himself the right to 
approve the clerical nominees of the State, while the tax- 
payers were annually to furnish $10,000,000 to pay clerical 
salaries. By this compact was brought back into France 
the subtle, resistless power of a corporation which, iden- 
tifying itself with God, demands supreme control. 

Napoleon himself soon felt the strength of this released 
giant, and the France of to-day is in a death grapple 
with it. 

The time may come when the Concordat will be con- 
sidered Napoleon's greatest blunder, his unpardonable 
political sin. It was not faith, it was not even philan- 
thropy which governed his conduct. It was cold calcula- 
tion. It was merely a move in the game of ambition. 
At the very moment that he claimed the gratitude of 
Christians for the restoration of religion, he sought to 
soothe the non-believers by telling them that under his 
system religion would disappear from France within fifty 
years. 

It is not true that a majority of the French clamored 
for a return of the old forms of worship. On the contrary, 
the vast majority were indifferent, if not hostile. In the 
army it caused a dangerous conspiracy among the officers, 
against Napoleon's life. 

When the Concordat came to be celebrated by a pom- 
pous pagan ceremonial in the cathedral of Notre Dame, it 
required all of his authority to compel a respectful at- 
tendance, as it had required the utmost exercise of his 
power to secure the sanction of the state authorities to 
the Concordat itself. More than one saddened French- 



5X111 THE CODE NAPOLlfeON 307 

man thought what General Delmas is reported to have 
said, when Napoleon asked his opinion of the ceremonial 
at Notre Dame; "It is a fine harlequinade, needing only 
the presence of the million men who died to do away with 
all that." 

Yes, a million Frenchmen had died to do away with 
that, — the worst feature of the Old Order, — and now it 
had all come back again. Once more the children of 
Prance were to have their brains put under the spell of 
superstition. They were to be taught the loveliness 
of swallowing every marvel the priest might utter, and 
the damnation of thinking for oneself upon any subject 
ecclesiastical. They were to be crammed from the cradle, 
on one narrow creed," and incessantly told that hell 
yawned for the luckless wight who doubted or demurred. 

With a line of writing, with a spurt of the pen. Napo- 
leon reenslaved the nation. So well had the image 
breakers of the Convention done their work that it 
appeared to be only a question of time when France, 
"having by her own exertions freed herself, would, by the 
force of her example, free the world." As Meneval states, 
"Catholicism seemed at its last gasp." Rapidly Europe 
was being weaned from a worn-out creed, a threadbare 
paganism. Idols had been broken, miracles laughed out 
of countenance, the bones of alleged saints allowed to 
rest, and the mummeries of heathen ceremonial mocked 
till even the performers were ashamed. 

A few bigots or fanatics, chained by an education which 
had left them no room for unfettered thought, longed for 
the return of the old forms; but the mass of the French 
people had no more wish for their reestablishment than 
for the restoration of the Bourbons. France was reli- 



308 NAPOLEON chap. 

giously free : every citizen could believe or not believe, 
worship or not worship, just as he pleased. 

Of all rulers, Napoleon had the best opportunity to give 
mental independence an open field and a fair fight. No 
ruler less strong than he could have achieved the task of 
lifting the Church from the dust, and frowning down the 
ridicule which had covered with discredit idol, shrine, 
creed, and ceremonial rite. 

He did it — he alone ! And verily he reaped his re- 
ward. The forlorn prisoner of St. Helena, sitting in mis- 
ery beside the cheerless hearth in the night of endless 
despair, cursed himself bitterly for his huge mistake. 

Some who defend the Concordat say that it enabled 
Napoleon to make alliances which* otherwise he could not 
have made. The facts do not support the assertion. He 
was at peace with Continental Europe already, and Great 
Britain was certainly not influenced to peace by France's 
agreement with the Pope. No alliances which Napoleon 
ever made after the Concordat were stronger than those 
he had made before ; and as the restorer of Catholicism in 
France, he was not nearer the sincere friendships of mon- 
archs and aristocracies abroad than he had been previous 
to that time. 

In the murk of modern politics the truth is hard to find, 
but even a timid man might venture to say that the ques- 
tion of religion is the last of all questions to influence 
international relations. Comparing the prolonged secu- 
rity which Turkey has enjoyed with the fate which re- 
cently befell Catholic Spain and Protestant South African 
republics, the casual observer might hazard the statement 
that it is at least as safe to be Mahometan as Christian, so 
far as winning international friendship is concerned. 



xxiii THE CODE NAPOL^JON 309 

" Don't strike ! I am of the same faith as you — 
both of us hope for salvation in the blood of the same 
Savior ! " is a plea which is so worthless among Chris- 
tians that the weaker brother never even wastes breath 
to make it. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

rpO say that the French were pleased with the consular 
government, would convey no idea of the facts. France 
was delighted, France was in raptures. Excepting the 
inevitable few, — some royalists, some Jacobins and some 
lineal descendants of the Athenians who grew tired of 
hearing Aristides called The Just, — all Frenchmen heart- 
ily united in praise of Bonaparte. 

As proudly as Richelieu, in Bulwer's play, stands before 
his king and tells what he has done for France, — a nation 
found lying in poverty, shame, defeat, deathly decay, and 
lifted by the magic touch of genius to wealth, pride, vic- 
tory, and radiant strength, — so the First Consul could 
have pointed to what France had been and what she had 
become, and justly claim the love and admiration of his 
people. 

What reward should be given such a magistrate? In 
1802 his consulship, which had already been lengthened 
by ten years, was, by the almost unanimous vote of the 
people, changed into a life tenure. 

Consul for life (August, 1802), with the power to name 
his own successor. Napoleon was now virtually the king 
of France. 

♦ * * » « « 

In St. Domingo, the Revolution in France had borne 
bitter fruit. The blacks rose against the whites, and a 
war of extermination ensued. 

310 



CHAP. XXIV PLOT AND CONSPIRACY 311 

The negroes, immensely superior in numbers, overcame 
the whites, and established their independence. Toussaint 
L'Ouverture, the leader of the blacks, and a great man, 
became president of the black republic, which he patterned 
somewhat after Napoleon's consulate. 

The rich French planters, who had the ear of Napoleon 
in Paris, urged him to put down the revolt, or to bring 
the island back under French dominion. Thus these 
Bourbon nobles led Napoleon into one of his worst mis- 
takes. He aligned himself with those who wished to 
reestablish slavery, put himself at enmity with the trend 
of liberalism everywhere, and plunged himself into a 
ruinous war. 

Mainly from the army of the Rhine, which was repub- 
lican and unfriendly to himself, he drew out of France 
twenty thousand of her best troops, put them under com- 
mand of Leclerc, his brother-in-law, and despatched them 
to St. Domingo, to reconquer the island. 

Here again it is impossible to escape the conclusion that 
Napoleon had not duly considered what he was doing. 
There is evidence of haste, want of investigation, lack of 
foresight and precaution. The whole plan, from inception 
to end, bears the marks of that rashness which is forever 
punishing the man who tries to do everything. 

The negroes gave way before Leclerc's overwhelming 
numbers ; and, by treachery, Toussaint was captured and 
sent to France to die in a dungeon ; but the yellow fever 
soon came to the rescue of the blacks, and the expedition, 
after causing great loss of life, ended in shameful failure. 
Leclerc died, the remnants of the French army were 
brought back to Europe in English ships, and the negroes 
established their semi-barbarous Republic of Hayti (1804). 



312 NAPOLEON chap. 

This much may be said by way of defence for 
Napoleon's treatment of San Domingo : it had been onr. 
of the choicest possessions of the French crown, and he 
wished to regain it for his country, just as he regainec' 
Louisiana, and just as he yearned for the lost territories 
in Hindustan. Visions of a vast colonial empire haunted 
his imagination, and the spirit which influenced him in 
his efforts in the West Indies was, perhaps, the same 
which lured him to Egypt, which caused him to attach 
such extreme importance to Malta, and which caused 
him to send men-of-war to South Australia to survey 
the coast for settlement. 



Meantime the Peace of Amiens was becoming a very 
frail thing, indeed. To all men, war in the near future 
seemed inevitable. Very positively England had pledged 
herself to restore Malta to the Knights of St. John ; very 
emphatically she now refused to do so. By way of excuse 
she alleged that France had violated the spirit of the 
treaty by her aggressions on the Continent. In reply, 
Napoleon insisted that France had done nothing which 
it was not well known she intended at the time peace was 
made. He also reminded England that she had taken 
India. And this was true, but truth sometimes cuts a 
poor figure in debate. In vain such splendid types of 
English manhood as Charles Fox stood forth boldly in the 
British Parliament, and defended the First Consul. Eng- 
land was determined not to give up the Mediterranean 
fortress. France had no navy, no sailor with a spark of 
Nelson's genius, and Malta was safe. On the Continent 
Napoleon might rage and might destroy ; but England had 



sxiT PI^OT AND CONSPIRACY S13 

proved how easy it was for her to bear the losses inflicted 
upon Continental Europe, and she was prepared to prove 
it again. Safe in her sea-girt isle, she was not to be 
intimidated by armies hurled against her allies. 

In this crisis, when conciliatory measures might have 
availed to avert war. Lord Whitworth was sent to Paris 
as British ambassador. With his coming all hope of ac- 
commodation vanished. He was a typical English aristo- 
crat, the very worst man who could have been sent if 
peace was desired. From the first, his letters to his gov- 
ernment show that he was intensely hostile to Napoleon 
and to the consular government. To his superiors at 
home he misrepresented the situation in France, and where 
he did not misrepresent, he exaggerated. Finally, when 
Napoleon went out of his way to have a long conference 
with him, and to urge that England should keep her con- 
tract, he showed himself coldly irresponsive, and hinted 
that Malta would not be given up. Following this pri- 
vate and urgent conference came the public reception, in 
which Napoleon, with some natural display of temper and 
with the frankness of a soldier, asked Whitworth why 
England wanted war, and why she would not respect 
treaties. Whereupon Whitworth represented to his court 
that he had been grossly insulted, and all England rang 
with indignation. A falser statement never caused more 
woe to the human race. Bismarck cynically confessed 
that he it was who changed the form, the wording, and 
the tone of " the Ems telegram " which caused the Franco- 
German War of 1870-1. It is not too much to say that 
Whitworth's exaggerated report, and the changes for the 
worse which the British ministry made in it when making 
it public, was one of the controlling causes of the wars, 



314 NAPOLEON chap. 

the bloodshed, and the misery which followed the year 
1804. 

During all this while the English newspapers were filled 
with the bitterest abuse of Napoleon. The most shameful 
lies that were ever published against a human being were 
constantly repeated against him in the British journals. 
That he should be subjected to such treatment during 
years of peace, and while he was giving most cordial wel- 
come to the thousands of Englishmen who were now 
visiting France, filled Napoleon with wrath. He knew 
that by law the press of Great Britain was free ; but he 
also knew that these papers, especially the ministerial 
papers, would not be filled with scurrilous personal abuse 
of him unless the government encouraged it. He knew 
that the political press reflects the views of the political 
party, and that when ministerial journals hounded him 
with libels, the ministers had given the signal. In vain 
he protested to the English ministry ; he was told that in 
England the press was free. Then, as all his admirers 
must regret, he, also, stooped to libels and began to fill 
the official organs in France with outrageous attacks upon 
England. 

Another grievance Napoleon had against Great Britain 
— she harbored men who openly declared their intention 
of assassinating him. English protection, English ships, 
English money, were ever at the command of the royalists 
who wished to stir up revolt in France, or to land assassins 
who wished to creep to Paris. On this subject, also, the 
English government would give no satisfaction. It coldly 
denied the accusation, disavowed the assassins, and con- 
tinued to encourage assassination. 

While relations were thus strained, a report of General 



XXIV PLOT AND CONSPIRACY 315 

Sebastiani on the eastern situation was published. In the 
paper, Sebastiani had ventured to say that six thousand 
French troops might reconquer Egypt. Here was another 
insult to England. Here was another excuse for editorial 
thunder, another provocative of parliamentary eloquence. 
England did not choose to remember that Sir Robert 
Wilson had just published a book, also on the eastern 
situation, and that in this publication Napoleon had been 
r-epresented as the murderer of prisoners at Jaffa, and the 
poisoner of his own sick in the hospitals. This book had 
been dedicated to the Duke of York by permission, and 
had been presented by the author to George IH., at a 
public levee. 

England was bent on war; no explanations or remon- 
strances would soothe her, and on May 18 war was 
declared. But she had already seized, without the slight- 
est warning, hundreds of French ships laden with mill- 
ions of merchandise — ships which had come to English 
harbors trusting to her faith pledged in the treaty. This 
capture and confiscation excited almost no comment, but 
when Napoleon retaliated by throwing into prison thou- 
sands of Englishmen who were travelling in France, 
England could find no words harsh enough to condemn 
the outrage. Even so intelligent a historian as Lockhart 
is aghast at Napoleon's perfidy. For, mark you, England 
had always seized what she could of the enemy's prop- 
erty previous to a declaration of war, whereas Napoleon's 
counterstroke was a novelty. It had never been done 
before, therefore it was an unspeakable atrocity — "It 
moved universal sympathy, indignation, and disgust." So 
says Lockhart, repeating dutifully what his father-in-law, 
Sir Walter Scott, had already said. And the most recent 



316 NAPOLEON chap. 

British historian, J. H. Rose, writing of that period, falls 
into the well-worn path of Tory prejudice, and ambles 
along composedly in the hallowed footprints of Lockhart 
and Sir Walter. 

Their style of putting the case is like this : It was 
wrong to seize an enemy's ships and sailors previous to 
a declaration of war, but Great Britain had always done 
it, and, consequently, she had a right to do it again. It 
was right for France to retaliate, but France had never 
retaliated, and, consequently, she had no right to do it 
now. Thus England's hoary wrong had become a saintly 
precedent, while Napoleon's novelty of retaliation was a 
damnable innovation. In this neat manner, entirely satis- 
factory to itself, Tory logic makes mesmeric passes over 
facts, and wrongs become rights while rights become 
wrongs. 

The eminent J. H. Rose, Master of Arts, and "Late 
Scholar of Christ's College, Cambridge," remarks : 

" Napoleon showed his rancour by ordering some eight 
or ten thousand English travellers in France to be kept 
prisoners." Why the eminent Master of Arts and "Late 
Scholar of Christ's College " did so studiously omit to 
state that England had already seized French ships and 
sailors before Napoleon seized the travellers, can be ex- 
plained by no one but a master of the art of writing par- 
tisan history. 

" Napoleon showed his rancour " — by hitting back 
when Britain dealt him a sudden unprovoked and das- 
tardly blow. Showed his rancour ! " Sir, the phrase is 
neat," as Mirabeau said to Mounier upon a certain historic 
occasion. 

Napoleon hastened to put Louisiana beyond England's 



XXIV PLOT AND CONSPIRACY 317 

reach. This imperial, but undeveloped, province had been 
lost to France by the Bourbon, Louis XV. and had only 
recently been recovered. Napoleon profoundly regretted 
the necessity which compelled him to sell it to the United 
States, for he realized its value. 

The war recommenced with vigor on both sides. Great 
Britain seized again upon all the colonies which she had 
released by treaty, and French armies in Italy or Ger- 
many added territory to France. 

Spain refusing to join the league against Napoleon, 
Great Britain made war upon her, captured her treasure 
ships upon the high seas, and thus forced her into the 
arms of France. She not only put her fleet at Napoleon's 
disposal, but agreed to furnish him a monthly subsidy of 
more than $1,000,000. 

Definitely threatening to invade Great Britain, Napo- 
leon made preparations for that purpose on a scale equal 
to the mighty task. Along the French and Dutch coasts 
160,000 men were assembled, and vast flotillas built to 
take them across the Channel. So great was the alarm 
felt in England that her coasts were watched by every 
available ship, and almost the entire manhood of the 
island enrolled itself in the militia, and prepared for a 
desperate struggle. 

So prominently did Napoleon stand forth as the em- 
bodiment of all that monarchical Europe detested, so 
completely did he represent all that England and the 
Bourbons most dreaded, that a mad determination to kill 
him took possession of his enemies. The head of the 
conspiracy was the Count of Artois, afterward king of 
France under the name of Charles X. The meetings of 
the conspirators were held in London. The plan adopted 



318 NAPOLEON chap. 

was that Pichegru (who had escaped from South America) 
and Moreau should be brought together to head the mal- 
contents in the army ; Georges Cadoudal, and a band of 
royalists equally resolute, should be landed on the Norman 
coast, should proceed to Paris, and should kill the First 
Consul ; a royalist revolt should follow, and the Count 
of Artois should then himself land on the Norman coast to 
head the insurrection. The English minister to Bavaria, 
Mr. Drake, was actively at work in the plot, and in one of 
his letters to a correspondent, wrote : " All plots against 
the First Consul must be forwarded ; for it is a matter of 
little consequence by whom the animal be stricken down, 
provided you are all in the hunt." Among others who 
were in the background and winding sonorous horns to 
those who were " in the hunt," were certain British agents, 
— Spencer Smith at Stuttgard, Taylor at Cassel, and Wick- 
ham at Berne. Directly in communication with the heads 
of the conspiracy in London was the under secretary of 
state, Hammond, the same who was so intolerably insolent 
to the United States during the second term of President 
Jefferson. 

Lavishly supplied with money by the English govern- 
ment, a ship of the royal navy was put at their service, — 
Captain Wright, an officer of that navy, being in command. 

The assassins were landed at the foot of a sea-washed 
cliff on the coast of Normandy in the night. Using a 
secret path and the rope-ladder of smugglers, they climbed 
the precipice and made their way secretly to Paris. Here 
they spent some weeks in organizing the conspiracy. The 
danger to Napoleon became so urgent that those who had 
the care of his personal safety felt that no precautions 
could be too great. De Segur, captain of the body-guard, 



XXIV PLOT AND CONSPIRACY 319 

relates how Caulaincourt, Grand Marshal of the palace pro 
tern, woke him up after twelve o'clock at night toward the 
end of January, 1804, with : " Get up ! Change the parole 
and the countersign immediately. There is not an instant 
to lose. The duties must be carried out as if in the pres- 
ence of the enemy ! " 

Napoleon himself remained cool, but gradually became 
very stern. Asked by one of his councillors if he were 
afraid, he replied: "I, afraid! Ah, if I were afraid, it 
would be a bad day for France." 

The first great object of the conspirators was to bring 
Pichegru and Moreau together. It was hoped and be- 
lieved that this could be readily done. It was remembered 
that Moreau had concealed the treasonable correspondence 
of Pichegru which had fallen into his hands in 1796. It 
was known that Moreau heartily disliked Napoleon. It was 
known that Moreau, sulking in his tent, and bitterly regret- 
ting his share in Napoleon's elevation to power, was in that 
frame of mind which leads men into desperate enterprises. 

Nevertheless, the conspirators found him very shy. By 
nature he was irresolute and weak, strong only when in 
command of an army. He consented to meet Pichegru, 
and did meet him at night, and have a few words with 
him in the street. Afterward Pichegru visited Moreau's 
house, but the proof that Moreau agreed to take any part 
in the conspiracy is not satisfactory. It seems that Moreau 
had no objection to the "removal" of Napoleon and the 
overthrow of the government. He even spoke vaguely of 
the support which he and his friends in authority might 
bring to those who were conspiring; but Moreau was a 
republican, — one of those ardent young men of 1789 who 
had left school to fight for the Republic, and he was not 



320 NAPOLEON chap. 

ready to aid in the restoration of the Bourbons. Willing 
to countenance the overthrow of Napoleon, he was not 
willing to undo the work of the Revolution. According 
to one account, he himself aspired to succeed Bonaparte. 
This disgusted Cadoudal, who in scornful anger declared 
that he preferred Napoleon "to this brainless, heartless 
Moreau." Inasmuch as Moreau had already become dis- 
gusted with Cadoudal, the conspiracy could not knit itself 
together. 

Meanwhile, repeated conferences were held between the 
assassins and various royalists of Paris who were in the 
plot, the most prominent of these being the brothers 
Polignac and De La Riviere. Napoleon knew in a general 
way that his life was being threatened, knowing just 
enough to be convinced that he must learn more or perish. 
His police seemed powerless, and as a last resort he tried 
a plan of his own. Causing a list of the suspected per- 
sons to be brought to him, his attention became fixed 
upon the name of a surgeon, Querel. In the belief 
that this man must be less of a fanatic than the others, 
he ordered that the surgeon should be brought to trial, 
and the attempt made to wring a confession from him. 
Tried accordingly, condemned, sentenced, and about to be 
shot, Querel broke down and confessed. 

Learning from him that the most dangerous of the 
conspirators were even then in Paris, a cordon of troops 
was thrown around the city, and a vigilant search begun. 
Pichegu, after dodging from house to house, was at 
length betrayed by an old friend with whom he had 
sought shelter. Georges was taken after a desperate 
fight in the street. Captain Wright was seized at the 
coast and sent to Paris. Moreau had already been 



XXIV PLOT AND CONSPIRACY 321 

arrested. Many other of the Georges band were in 
prison. Napoleon's fury was extreme, and not unnat- 
ural. He had been lenient, liberal, conciliatory to his 
political foes. He had pushed to the verge of imprudence 
the policy of reconciliation. Vendeans, royalists, priests 
— all had felt his kindness. Some of the very men who 
were now threatening him with assassination were emigres 
whom he had relieved from sentence of death and had 
restored to fortune. What had he done to England or 
to the Bourbons that they should put him beyond the 
pale of humanity? Had he not almost gone upon his 
knees in his efforts to secure peace ? Had he ever lifted 
his hand against a Bourbon save in open war which they 
themselves had commenced? And now what was he to 
do to put a stop to these plots hatched in London? 
To what court could he appeal ? With the Bourbons 
safely housed in England and supplied with British money, 
ever ready to arm against him the fanatics of royalism, 
what was he to do to protect his life ? Was he to await 
the attack, living in constant apprehension, never knowing 
when the blow would fall, uncertain how the attack would 
be made, ignorant who the assassin might be, and in eternal 
doubt as to whether he could escape the peril ? Can mor- 
tal man be placed in a position more trying than that of 
one who knows that sworn murderers are upon his track, 
and that some one moment of every day and every night 
may give the opportunity to the unsleeping vigilance of 
the assassin ? 

Roused as he had never been, Napoleon determined not 
to wait, not to stand upon literal self-defence. He would 
strike back, would anticipate his enemies, would paralyze 
their plans by carrying terror into their own ranks. 



322 NAPOLEON chap. 

The head of the conspiracy, Artois, could not be 
reached. Expected on the French coast, he had not 
come. But his cousin, the Duke d'Enghien was at Etten- 
heim, close to the French border. 

What was he doing there ? He had borne arms against 
France, a crime which under the law of nations is treason, 
and which under the law of all lands is punishable with 
death. By French law, existing at the time, he had for- 
feited his life as a traitor. He was in the pay of England, 
the enemy of France. He was closely related by blood 
and by interest to the two brothers, Provence and Artois, 
who were making desperate efforts to recover the crown 
for the Bourbon family. What was the young Bourbon 
duke doing so near to the French border at this particu- 
lar time? 

Royalist authors say that he was there to enjoy the 
pleasures of the chase ; also to enjoy the society of the 
Princess de Rohan, to whom they now say, without evi- 
dence, that he was secretly married. 

Sir Walter Scott, a most unfriendly witness for Napoleon, 
admits that d'Enghien "fixed himself on the frontier 
for the purpose of being ready to put himself at the head 
of the royalists in East France, or Paris itself." 

That he was on the Rhine awaiting some event, some 
change in France in which he would have "a part to 
play," was confessed, and cannot be denied. 

What was the movement at whose head he was waiting 
to place himself ? What other plan did the royalists have in 
progress at the time other than the Georges-Pichegru plot ? 
If d'Enghien was waiting on the Rhine until they should 
have dealt the blow in Paris, was he not an accomplice, 
a principal in the second degree? It does not matter 



xxiT PLOT AND CONSPIRACY 323 

whether he knew the details of the Georges-Pichegru 
conspiracy or not. If he had been instructed to hold 
himself in readiness on the French frontier to enter the 
country and " act a part " therein, his common sense told 
him that a plot was on foot, and if he did not wish to be 
treated as an accomplice, he should not have acted as one. 
The cowardly d'Artois had not left London, and the Duke 
d'Enghien was to enter France as representative of the 
Bourbon family after the First Consul should have been 
killed. 

The rule in law and equity is that where one is put 
upon notice of a transaction, he is to be held as knowing 
all that he could have learned by reasonable inquiry. The 
instructions issued to d'Enghien put him upon notice that 
something unusual was in progress, that it concerned him, 
and that he had a part to play. Prudent inquiry made by 
him of his Bourbon relatives in London would have put 
him in possession of the facts. This inquiry he either 
made or he did not : if he made it, he learned of the 
plot; if he did not make it, his was the negligence -of 
being ignorant of the plan in which he was to "act a 
part." 

It is very improbable that the Count of Artois, who 
had sent word to the Count of Provence at Warsaw 
asking his adhesion to the conspiracy, should have given 
his cousin, d'Enghien, a " part to act " in it without 
informing him of the nature of the drama itself. 

The police reports made to Napoleon led him to believe 
that the young duke was privy to the plot, and was wait- 
ing at Ettenheim ready to take part in it. Here was a 
Bourbon he could reach. Through this one, he would 
strike terror into the others. " Neither is my blood ditch- 



324 NAPOLEON chap. 

water ! I will teach these Bourbons a lesson they will not 
soon forget. Am I a dog to be shot down in the street ? " 

After deliberating with his councillors, Talleyrand and 
all the rest, the First Consul issued his orders. A French 
squadron rode rapidly to the Rhine, crossed over to Etten- 
heim, seized the Duke, who had been warned in vain, and 
hurried him to Paris. Stopped at the barrier, he was sent 
to Vinceunes, tried by court-martial that night, condemned 
upon his own confession, sentenced to death, shot at day- 
break, and buried in the moat of the castle. 

This harsh act of retaliation had met the approval of 
Talleyrand — an approval given in a written paper which 
he was quick to seize and destroy upon Napoleon's fall in 
1814. During the day upon which the Duke was being taken 
to Vincennes, Talleyrand was asked, " What is to be done 
with the Duke d'Enghien ? " and had replied to the ques- 
tioner, " He is to be shot." 

The Consul Cambaceres, who had voted for death at the 
trial of Louis XVI., opposed the arrest, giving his reasons 
at length. Napoleon replied : " I know your motive for 
speaking — your devotion to me. I thank you for it; but 
I will not allow myself put to death without defending 
myself. I will make these people tremble, and teach them 
to keep quiet for all time to come." 

Poor Josephine, who could never meet a member of the 
old noblesse without a collapse of spirit, a gush of adulation, 
and a yielding sensation at the knees, made a feeble effort 
to turn her husband from his purpose ; but when Napoleon 
reminded her that she was a mere child in politics, and 
had better attend to her own small affairs, she dried her 
tears, and went into the garden to amuse herself with her 
flower-beds. 



XXIV PLOT AND CONSPIRACY 325 

Napoleon himself made a thorough study of the papers, 
taken with the Duke at Ettenheim, and drew up a series of 
questions which were to be put to the prisoner by Rdal, 
state councillor. The messenger sent by the First Consul 
did not see R^al, and the paper was not handed him till 
five o'clock next morning. Worn out by continuous toil, 
the councillor had gone to bed the evening before, leaving 
instructions with his household that he was not to be dis- 
turbed. Next morning when he was posting along the 
highway to Vincennes, he met Savary on his way back to 
Paris. Savary had already carried out the death-sentence, 
and the victim was in his grave. 

It seems that the young Duke had not realized his dan- 
ger. A term of imprisonment, at most, was all he feared. 
In vain the court-martial endeavored to hint at the fatal 
consequence of the admissions he was making. Uncon- 
scious of the fact that he was convicting himself, he 
repeated the statements that he had borne arms against 
France, that he had been in the pay of England, that he 
had tampered with French soldiers on the Rhine, that he 
had been instructed to place himself near the Rhine where 
he could enter France, arms in hand, and be ready for 
the part he was to play; and that he intended to con- 
tinue to bear arms against the government of France 
which he regarded as a usurpation. 

It must not be forgotten that in sending the Duke 
d'Enghien before a court-martial, Napoleon had before 
him certain documentary evidence which we do not now 
possess. The Duke's own papers, Talleyrand's opinion, 
and the reports of certain officials disappeared from the 
archives after the Bourbons returned in 1814 — just as 
the documentary evidence against Marie Antoinette was 



326 NAPOLEON chap. 

destroyed, and the letters which crowned heads of Europe 
had written Napoleon stolen and carried away. 

Peculiarly awful must have been the vision of sudden 
death to this youthful prince of the blood-royal, as he 
was dragged from bed in the dismal darkness of early 
morning, and hurried to face a file of silent soldiers beside 
an open grave. After the first shock and outcry of amaze- 
ment, the courage in which his race has rarely been want- 
ing came to the condemned, and he met his fate with a 
soldier's nerve. 

In 1805, during the march upon Vienna, Napoleon re- 
ceived at his bivouac M. de Thiard, who had known 
d'Enghien well. For a long while the Emperor sat talk- 
ing with this officer, asking many questions about the 
Duke, and listening with interest to all that was told him. 

" He was really a man, then, that prince ? " he asked, 
and this casual remark was his sole comment. 

Among all those who believe that the life of a prince 
is more sacred than that of a plebeian, among aristocrats 
of all countries, and among the crowned heads of Europe, 
there was a burst of grief and rage when it became known 
that Napoleon had shot a Bourbon duke. Thousands of 
pages were written then, thousands have been written 
since, in denunciation of this so-called murder. Men who 
had never uttered a word in condemnation of Lord Nel- 
son's treatment of Carraccioli, could find no words harsh 
enough for Napoleon's usage of d'Enghien. Alexander 
of Russia, who had whimpered in the palace while his 
father was being stamped, choked, and smothered to death 
in the adjoining room, and who had promoted the assassins 
to high trusts in his own service, took Napoleon's conduct 
more to heart than did any of the royal fraternity. As- 



xxiT PLOT AND CONSPIRACY 827 

suming the lofty moral attitude of one who is missioned 
to rebuke sin, he broke off diplomatic relations with 
France and put the Russian court in mourning. Napo- 
leon launched at the Czar a crushing reminder on the 
subject of Paul's death, and Alexander suffered the sub- 
ject to drop. 

Paris, stunned at first by the tragedy, recovered itself 
immediately ; and when Napoleon appeared at the theatre 
a few nights afterward, he was acclaimed as usual. Talley- 
rand gave a ball, and society was there with the same old 
stereotyped smile upon its vacuous face. 

Nevertheless, it is certain that the death of this young 
Duke injured Napoleon in public esteem, was of no politi- 
cal service to him, armed his enemies with a terrible 
weapon against him, and gave to the exiled Bourbons a 
sympathy they had not enjoyed since the Revolution. Said 
Fouchd, "It is worse than a crime; it is a blunder." 
But there is no evidence that Napoleon ever regretted it. 
It is true that he became enraged when Talleyrand denied 
his share in the transaction, and that he always maintained 
that Talleyrand had advised it ; but he never shirked his 
own responsibility. 

When he lay upon his death-bed at St. Helena, an 
attendant read to him from an English publication a 
bitter attack upon those guilty of the alleged murder of 
d'Enghien. The dying Emperor had already made his 
will; but he roused himself, had the paper brought, and 
interlined with his own hands these final words in which 
he assumed full responsibility : — 

" I had the Duke d'Enghien arrested and tried because 
it was necessary to do so for the safety, the honor, and the 
interest of the French people at a time when the Count 



328 NAPOLEON chap, xxiv 

of Artois openly admitted that he had sixty paid assassins 
in Paris. Under similar circumstances I would do so 
again." 

The trials of Moreau, Georges, and the other conspirators 
did not take place until Napoleon had become emperor. 
The prosecution was clumsily managed ; and as to Moreau, 
public opinion was divided. His services, so recent and 
so great, gave some color to the story that Napoleon was 
actuated by jealousy in having him classed with criminals. 
However, Moreau weakened his defence by an exculpa- 
tory letter he wrote Napoleon, and this together with such 
proofs as the government could furnish, and such influence 
as it could bring to bear on the court, resulted in a convic- 
tion and a sentence of two years in confinement. This 
penalty Napoleon changed into one of banishment. 
Georges and a number of others were shot. Pichegru 
and Wright committed suicide. The Polignacs and 
Riviere, as guilty as the guiltiest, were pardoned — they 
being of gentle birth, and being fortunate in having the 
friendship of some who stood near Napoleon. 



CHAPTER XXV 

TVURING the years of the peace (1801-1804), French in- 
fluence upon the Continent kept marching on. Napo- 
leon's diplomacy was as effective as his cannon. Holland 
became a subject state, with a new constitution dictated 
by France, and a governing council which took guidance 
from France (1801). 

Lombardy dropped its title of the Cisalpine, and became 
the Italian republic, with Napoleon for President. 
French troops entered Switzerland, put down civil strife, 
and the country for ten years enjoyed peace and prosper- 
ity under a constitution given it by Napoleon, he being 
virtually its ruler under the name of Mediator of the 
Helvetic League. 

In Germany, a general shaking up and breaking up of 
political fossils and governmental dry bones occurred. The 
territory ceded to France by the treaty of Lune- 
ville needed to be reorganized. The German princes, who 
were dispossessed, required compensation. Prussia had to 
be paid for her neutrality. Austria wished to recoup her 
losses. How was it possible for diplomacy to satisfy at 
the same time France, which had fought and won ; Austria 
which had fought and lost ; and Prussia, which had not 
fought at all ? 

Napoleon was ready with his answer. Let the strong 
help themselves to the territories of the weak. At Ras- 

329 



330 NAPOLEON chap. 

tadt, Napoleon had remarked to Marten, " Does not public 
law nowadays consist simpl}'^ in the right of the stronger?" 
Evidently it did, as it does yet, and ever has done. Upon 
this theory the German complication was worked out. 
There were fifty so-called Free Cities which, being weak 
and in debt, might be forcibly absorbed. There were a 
number of ecclesiastical princes, ruling wretchedly over 
wide and rich domains, whose tempting wealth might be 
confiscated. There were hundreds of knights of the Ger- 
man Empire, decayed relics of medisevalism, each holding 
as private property a snug territory, whose people the 
knight taxed, judged, and outraged at his own good pleas- 
ure. The Congress of Rastadt had been laboring upon 
this German problem at the time Austria murdered the 
French envoys (1798). The task was now resumed 
(1801) nominally by the Congress at Ratisbon, but really 
by French diplomats in Paris. Talleyrand, as Minister 
of Foreign Affairs, had a magnificent opportunity to 
feather his nest with bribes, and he made the most of it. 
German diplomatists posted to Paris, paid court to the 
corrupt minister, laughed at all his good sayings, fondled 
his poodle, petted his supposed bastard, and lavished their 
gold upon him to win his influence. 

When the process of reorganization was completed, Ger- 
many had been revolutionized. Most of the Free Cities 
were no longer free, but were incorporated with the 
territory of the government in which they were located. 
The ecclesiastical princes were reduced to the condition 
of salaried priests, their domains confiscated to the govern- 
ments. Bavaria, Baden, Wiirtemberg, were given large 
increase of territory ; Prussia was not left unrewarded ; 
France got all she was entitled to ; and Austria, the de- 



XXV EMPEROR 331 

feated nation, lost almost nothing. The happy combi- 
nation of France, Prussia, Austria, and Russia, to settle 
their differences at the expense of the Free Cities and 
the Princes of the German Catholic Church, had been 
blessed with brilliant success. 

Following the redistribution of German lands came 
changes yet more vital. The wretched little feudal sov- 
ereignties disappeared. The imperial knights lost their 
out-of-date principalities. The leaven of the French 
Revolution penetrated far beyond the Rhine. Offices 
ceased to be bought, sold, and inherited. Regular sys- 
tems of taxation, police, and legal procedure came into 
use. The trades and professions were thrown open to 
all : caste was breached, the peasant freed from some 
of his heaviest burdens. Education, in some parts of 
Germany, was taken out of the hands of the Church, 
and the clergy made amenable to the law. 

In this manner Napoleon had, unconsciously perhaps, 
laid the foundation for the union of the German peoples 
into one great empire, by the suppression of so many of 
those small, jealous, and hide-bound principalities which 
had divided the land, and which nothing but overwhelm- 
ing pressure from without could have reformed. 

Thus, while still wearing the modest title of First Con- 
sul, the ruler of France had grown to proportions which 
were imperial. To the French, he was the necessary man 
without whom they might relapse into chaotic conditions. 
The wondrous structure he had reared seemed to rest 
upon his strength alone. His life was the sole guaran- 
tee of law and order. Should assassins strike him down, 
what would be the situation in France ? To avoid such 
a danger, and to deprive royalist fanatics of such a 



332 NAPOLEON chap. 

temptation, would it not be better to make Napoleon 
monarch, and to settle the succession? In that event his 
death would not bring about endless confusion and 
violent convulsions. Reasoning of this kind seems to 
have moved the Senate to propose that the First Consul 
accept a new title, and on May 18, 1804, he proclaimed 
himself Emperor of the French. 

Partly by the force of circumstances, partly by sincere 
conviction, partly by the exertion of Napoleon's wonder- 
ful gift for the management of men, France had been so 
well prepared for this change in her form of government 
that she indorsed it by a practically unanimous vote. 
Only such stalwart exponents of a principle as Carnot 
and Lafayette protested. 

With the Empire came all things imperial : a change of 
constitution ; a creation of high dignitaries ; the ennobling 
of the Bonaparte family, Lucien excepted ; the creation 
of marshals in the army ; the establishment of court 
forms and etiquette in the palace. 

Gorgeous and imposing were the ceremonies which 
ushered in the New Order. Paris, France, Europe, were 
dazzled by the lavish expenditures, the magnificent parade, 
with which the Consul became Emperor. He spared no 
expense, no pains, no personal discomfort, to make the 
pageant a success. Historians have sneered at the rehear- 
sals by means of which he prepared each actor in the cor- 
onation for his part ; but the ridicule would seem to be 
misplaced. His example has set the fashion ; and not 
only are private marriages rehearsed in our day, but royal 
funerals and royal coronations perfect their functions by 
the same prudent process. 

That nothing might be wanting to the solemnity and 



iiT EMPEROR 333 

impressiveness of the occasion, Napoleon insisted that the 
Pope should come from Rome to Paris and officiate. So 
recent and so immense had been Napoleon's services to 
the Church that the Pontiff could not refuse, more espe- 
cially as he had other favors to ask. 

Brilliant as a dream was the coronation in the great 
cathedral of Notre Dame. Paris never witnessed a civic 
and military display more splendid. The Church, the 
State, princes foreign and native, grandees old and new, 
blazed forth in the utmost that wealth and pride and 
vanity could display. In a coach heavy with gold Na- 
poleon and Josephine rode, amid soldiers, to the church 
where the Pope had long awaited their coming ; and 
when the great Corsican had been conducted through 
the proper forms, had prayed, had sworn, had been oiled 
and blessed, he proudly took the crown out of the Pope's 
hands, crowned himself, and then crowned the kneeling 
Josephine (December, 1804). His mother was not there, 
she was in Rome with the revolted Lucien ; but when 
the artist David painted the picture of the coronation. 
Napoleon, with his never failing eye for effect, had 
Madame Letitia put in. Just as he wished for his mother 
on this the great day of his life, he did not forget his 
father. 

" Joseph, what would father have said ! " 

One who had lifted himself from a cottage to the 
White House in these United States drew all hearts to 
himself when, after having taken the oath of office, he 
turned to his old mother and kissed her. Not far distant 
from the same creditable feeling was Napoleon's regret 
for his father. 

Mother Letitia could not be persuaded to leave Rome 



334 NAPOLEON chap. 

and the insurgent Lucien; bat the old nurse journeyed 
from Corsica to see her nursling crowned. Napoleon 
hugged and kissed the old woman, lavished every atten- 
tion upon her, and kept her in Paris a couple of months. 
When she returned to Ajaccio, she was laden with gifts. 

Nor could Brienne be overlooked in these sunny days 
of triumph and of happiness. The Emperor must return 
to the school grounds of his boyhood, view the old familiar 
scenes, talk of old times with such former acquaintances 
as might still be there. Behold him, then, soon after his 
coronation, arriving at the chateau of Brienne, at six in 
the evening, where Madame de Brienne and Madame Lo- 
menie await him at the foot of the steps. He spends the 
night at the chateau, whose kind mistress had so often 
made him welcome in the forlorn days of his youth. He 
walks about the place, pointing out every spot familiar 
to him when at school. He visits the field of La Rothiere, 
a favorite strolling place of his youth. He is so affable, 
so animated, so interested, that his movements seem to 
say, See where I started from, and where I have arrived. 
"And what has become of Mother Marguerite, the peasant 
woman who used to sell milk, eggs, and bread to the 
boys?" Mother Marguerite is still living, still to be found 
at the thatched cottage in the woods. By all means, 
the Emperor must quit the fine circle at the chateau 
and visit the old peasant in the hut. A man so gifted 
with.,eye to effect could never miss a point like that. 
So the horse is saddled and brought ; the Emperor 
mounts and rides ; and at the cottage in the wood his 
Majesty alights and enters. 

" Good day. Mother Marguerite ! " The aged eyes are 
dim, and they gleam with no recognition. She knows 



XXV EMPEROR , 33S 

that the Emperor is in the neighborhood ; she expects to 
go to the chateau to see him ; she will carry him a basket 
of eggs to remind him of old times. Suddenly his Majesty 
puts himself where the dim eyes can see him better, draws 
nearer to her, and mimicking in voice and manner liis 
schoolboy tone, and rubbing his hands as he had used to 
do : " Come, Mother Marguerite ! Some milk and fresh 
eggs ; we are dying of hunger." 

A little more jogging of the memory, and the ancient 
dame, knowing now who it is, falls at the Emperor's feet. 
He lifts her, and still insists on the eggs and milk. She 
serves, he eats, both of them happy, and both of them full 
of reminiscences of the years long ago. Though he left 
her a purse of gold, Mother Marguerite probably was 
prouder of the fact that he came to her house and ate. 

One more visit the great Emperor will pay Brienne, 
the year of the last visit being 1814. Foreign invaders 
will be encamped all round about the playgrounds of 
his boyhood. Prussian Bliicher will be taking his ease 
and his dinner in the chateau. Prussian Bliicher will 
give him battle at Brienne, and will rout him at La 
Rothiere. And to his companions, the falling Emperor 
will again point out places of interest in the old school- 
ground, but not in the happy vein of 1804. 



What should be done with Italy ? French arms had 
wrested her from Austria and defended her from Russia. 
She was too weak to stand alone. Take away the support 
of France, and she would again be cut up and devoured 
by the stronger powers. On all sides she was threatened. 
The English were at Malta, the Russians at Corfu, the 



336 NAPOLEON chap. 

Austrians in Venice, while in Naples and Rome were ap- 
parent allies, but actual foes. Reasons of state made it 
imperative that Napoleon's imperial system should embrace 
Italy, and the Italians themselves favored the change. 

Napoleon tendered the crown to his brother Joseph. 
To the amazement of the world that preposterous egotist 
refused upon two grounds : first, Italy was too near to 
France for its king to enjoy that complete independence 
which Joseph felt necessary to his self-respect ; second, 
the crown of France belonged to him, in prospect, as heir 
of the childless Napoleon ; and Joseph would not exchange 
this selfish, shadowy claim for the certainty offered him 
by his too partial brother ! Surely there never lived a 
man more be-cursed with ingrates of his own blood than 
Napoleon ! 

"I am sometimes tempted to believe," said he, "that 
Joseph thinks I have robbed my elder brother of his share 
of the inheritance of the late king, our father ! " 

It was only after Joseph had resisted all persuasions 
that Napoleon decided to make himself king of Italy 
"until the peace." 

In April, 1805, taking Josephine with him, he crossed 
the Alps. Everywhere he was greeted with enthusiasm. 
On the field of Marengo he and Josephine sat upon a 
throne and viewed the splendid rehearsal of the battle 
in which the young hero had crushed Austria and rescued 
Italy at a blow. 

In May, 1805, he placed upon his head, amid pomps and 
ceremonies in the cathedral of Milan, the iron crown of 
the Lombards. Josephine looked on from the gallery; 
she was not crowned queen of Italy ; but her son, the 
loyal and gallant Eugene Beauharnais, was made Viceroy 



XXV EMPEROR 337 

of the new kingdom. His Holiness, the Pope, was not 
present at the ceremony; his Holiness was chagrined and 
unfriendly ; he had left Paris a disappointed man ; he 
had asked many favors of Napoleon, " my son in Christ 
Jesus," which had been denied, and already was to be 
seen the slender line of the rift between Napoleon and 
the Papacy which was to grow and grow, widening year 
by year, until the yawning chasm was to ingulf much of 
the strength of the Empire. 

But, for the time being, the Pope went his way almost 
unnoticed, meekly implacable, humbly vindictive, waiting 
his chance to strike the ruler he had so recently oiled and 
blessed, while the vaulting Corsican, using an archbishop 
to manipulate the clerical machinery instead of a pope, 
inflated himself with pride as he felt upon his head the 
crown of Charlemagne. 

And had he no cause to be proud ? Did the history of 
the world disclose a more dazzling record than his ? Not 
born to the throne, a stranger to the purple and the gold 
of rank, the greatest Empire of modern times was his ; 
and, as heir to the Caesars, he had now caught upon his 
arms the grandeur and the glory of old Rome. Emperor 
of the West ! — another Theodosius, another Charles the 
Great ! And only a few years ago he had meekly 
stopped to scrape the mud of the streets off his coarse 
boots to avoid offence to the nose of Madame Permon : 
had pawned his watch for food ; had moodily thought of 
uirowning himself in the Seine because his mother had 
pleaded for help which he was too poor to give ! 

If ever mortal was justly proud, it was he, — Napoleon, 
the penniless son of the lawyer ; Napoleon, tireless 
student, unwearied worker^ unconquerable adventurer, 



338 NAPOLEON chap. 

resistless soldier of Fortune, — Napoleon, Emperor of 
France and King of Italy, whose crowns had come to 
him unstained of blood ! He was the strongest, the 
wisest, the best in fight, in work, in council ; and they 
had raised him aloft on their bucklers as the strongest 
had been lifted in the valiant days of old. 

Nothing in Napoleon's career was more brilliant than 
his triumphal progress through the Italian eities. Every- 
thing which a passionate, imaginative people could do to 
testify their admiration and affection, they did ; and dur- 
ing these brief, sunny weeks when he moved amid ovations 
and splendors, amid rejoicings and blessings, amid music 
and flowers, with Josephine by his side, he probably came 
as near to happiness as his restless, craving nature could 
come. Everywhere he left indelible footprints, — roads, 
canals, public buildings of all sorts, mighty and useful 
works which made his tour memorable for all time. 

Genoa, following the lead of Italy, and friendly sugges- 
tions from France, voted to unite her fortunes with those 
of the new Empire. The Doge and the Senate went in 
state to Milan, were received by Napoleon on his throne, 
and prayed that he would accept the ancient republic as a 
part of France. Graciously the modern Csesar consented ; 
the Doge became a French senator, and out of the terri- 
tories of the republic were carved three French depart- 
ments. 

The little republic of Lucca cauglit the general infec- 
tion, sent a deputation to Milan, begged at Napoleon's 
hands a government and a constitution, was warmly wel- 
comed by the Emperor, and was bestowed as an imperial 
fief upon his sister Elisa, wife of a Corsican fiddler named 
Bacciochi. 




JOSEPHINE IN 1809 
From a water-color by Isabey 



XXV EMPEKOR 339 

The horror and indignation with which European kings 
and cabinets looked upon these encroacliments can easily 
be imagined. With one accord they began to cry out 
against Napoleon's "insatiable ambition." England did 
not consider how she had despoiled France in Canada, on 
the Ohio, in Hindustan. Russia and Austria made no 
account of provinces taken from Poland or Turkey. All 
the great nations were growing greater ; the general bal- 
ance of power had been disturbed : was France alone to be 
denied the right to extend her system over states which 
asked for it, and which were dependent upon her for pro- 
tection ? 

In January, 1805, Napoleon had written directly to the 
King of England, as he had done once before, asking for 
peace. As before, his advances had been repelled. Great 
Britain had already begun to knit together the threads 
of another coalition. An understanding existed between 
England, Russia, Austria, and Sweden. Naples, through 
her Bourbon rulers, was fawning at Napoleon's feet, flat- 
tering and servile, while secretly she was plotting his 
downfall. Well aware of the storm which was gathering 
on the Continent, Napoleon prepared for it, but did not for 
an instant relax his efforts at Boulogne. 

His plan was to send his fleet to sea, decoy Nelson 
into pursuit, and then, while his own ships doubled and 
came back to the Channel, to cross his army over to Eng- 
land, under its protection, in his flat-bottomed boats. 
" Masters of the Channel for six hours, we are masters 
of the world." 

It was not to be. Wind and waves fought against him. 
The incapacity of his navy fought against him. Into sol- 
diers on land he could infuse courage, confidence, sympa- 



340 NAPOLEON chap. 

thetic cooperation. But the navy baffled him: all his 
efforts were vain. His admirals could not, or would not, 
have faith ; could not, or would not, obey orders ; could 
not, or would not, cooperate. Utterly wasted were all his 
labors, all his expenditures. Austrian armies were march- 
ing against Bavaria, Napoleon's ally ; Russian hordes were 
moving down from the north ; Prussia's magnificent army 
of fifty thousand men was in the balance, wavering omi- 
nously, and threatening to unite with the coalition. 

Such was the situation on the Continent when the de- 
spatches reached Napoleon that all his great plans for the 
invasion of England had gone to wreck and ruin ; that his 
admiral had misconceived or had disobeyed positive orders; 
that the French fleet would not only be unable to give 
him aid, but was so scattered and so placed that it must 
inevitably fall a prey to the English. 

" It was about four o'clock in the morning of August 
13, that the news was brought to the Emperor," says 
Segur. " Daru was summoned, and on entering gazed on 
his chief in utter astonishment." The Emperor "looked 
perfectly wild"; his hat jammed down over his eyes, 
" his whole aspect terrible. " As soon as he saw Daru, he 
rushed up, and poured out a torrent of pent-up wrath. He 
railed at his admiral, his imbecile admiral, " that damned 
fool of a Villeneuve ! " He paced " up and down the 
room, with great strides for about an hour," venting his 
rage, his disappointment, his reproaches. Then stopping 
suddenly and pointing to a desk, he exclaimed : " Sit 
down there, Daru, and write ! " And with marvellous 
self-control, wresting his thoughts away from Villeneuve, 
the fleet, the blasted plans of invasion, he dictated to the 
secretary, hour after hour, as fast as pen could catch the 



XXV EMPEROR 341 

rushing words, the whole campaign of Ulm in its largest 
outline, in its smallest detail, embracing, as it did, the 
movement of his own vast legions lying along the coast 
for two hundred leagues, the movement of Massena from 
Italy, of Marmont from Holland, and of Bernadotte from 
Hanover. Four hundred thousand soldiers were moving 
against the French ; less than half that number of French 
rushed to repel the attack. The vast camps on the Bou- 
logne coast vanished, the eagles set Rhineward, other 
legions marched as they had never marched before — 
thousands speeding along the roads in coaches. The 
Austrians had not waited for the Russians ; Bavaria had 
been overrun ; and Mack, the Austrian general, was now 
dawdling about Ulm. Before he suspected what was 
happening. Napoleon's combination had been made, a cir- 
cle of steel drawn about his adversary ; and the French 
armies, closing in upon front, rear, and flanks, held 
the Austrians as in a mighty trap. With the exception 
of a few squadrons which broke through the gaps in the 
French lines as they advanced, the whole Austrian army 
laid down its arms (October 20, 1805). In the Memoirs 
of de Segur we are given a personal glimpse of the Em- 
peror which is perhaps more interesting to the average 
reader than the dreary narrative of march, counter-march, 
manoeuvre, and battle. 

During the combats around Elchingen, Napoleon, soaked 
with rain, went to a farmhouse at Hasslach to wait for 
Lannes and the Guard to come up. There was a stove 
which threw out its comfortable heat, and before it sat a 
drummer boy, wet, cold, and wounded. Napoleon's staff 
officers told the boy to get out, and go somewhere else. 
The drummer would not hear of it. The room was big 



342 NAPOLEON chap 

enough for both the Emperor and himself, he said, and 
he meant to stay. Napoleon laughed, and told them to 
let the boy alone, "since he made such a point of it." 
In a few moments the Emperor was dozing on one side 
of the stove and the drummer lad on the other. Around 
the two sleepers were grouped the staff officers, standing, 
and awaiting orders. 

Louder roared the cannon, and every few minutes 
Napoleon would rouse himself and send off messengers 
to hasten Lannes. While the Emperor was thus nap- 
ping, Lannes came up, entered the room abruptly, and 
exclaimed : " Sire ! What are you thinking about ? You 
are sleeping while Ney, single-handed, is fighting against 
the whole Austrian army ! " — " That's just like Ney, 
I told him to wait," said Napoleon, and springing on 
his horse, he galloped off so fast that Lannes, afraid now 
that the Emperor would rush into danger, roughly seized 
the bridle rein and forced him back in a less dangerous 
position. Ney was reenforced, and the Austrians routed. 



In the midst of his own successes. Napoleon received 
the tidings from Trafalgar. Nelson had fought the com- 
bined fleets of France and Spain, had lost his own life, 
but had won so complete a triumph that England's 
supremacy at sea was not disputed again throughout 
the Napoleonic wars. The shock to Napoleon must 
have been stunning, but he only said, " I cannot be 
everywhere." 

Continuing his advance, he entered Vienna, November 
13, 1805, and lost no time in throwing his army across 
the Danube, in hot pursuit of the retreating enemy. 



xxr EMPEROR 343 

By a trick and a falsehood, Murat and Lannes secured 
the great bridge, and much precious time was saved. By 
a similar trick, the Russians deceived Murat a few days 
later, and escaped the net Napoleon had thrown around 
them, and thus "the fruits of a campaign were lost." 
Murat gained the bridge by pretending that an armistice 
had been agreed on ; the Russians made good their escape 
by duping Murat with the same falsehood. Napoleon's 
anger was extreme, the more so as a blunder of Murat's 
had come within a hair's-breadth of spoiling the campaign 
of Ulm. 

Failing to trap the Russians as he had trapped the Aus- 
trians, there was nothing for Napoleon to do but to press 
the pursuit. League after league the French penetrated 
a hostile country, new armies mustering on all sides to 
rush in upon them, until they were in the heart of 
Moravia. The Emperor Francis of Austria had joined 
the Czar Alexander, and the combined Russo-Austrian 
forces, outnumbering the French, confronted Napoleon 
at Austerlitz. The position of the French, far from 
home and surrounded by populations rushing to arms, 
was critical. Napoleon realized it, and so did his foe. 
There is no doubt that he would have welcomed an 
honorable peace, but the terms offered by the Czar were 
so insulting that he indignantly rejected them. Hastily 
concentrating his army, he made ready to fight. He 
artfully cultivated the self-confidence of the enemy, and 
put them under the impression that he was trying to 
escape. They had the hardihood to believe that they 
could turn his position, cut him off from his line of 
retreat, and do to him at Austerlitz as he had done to 
Mack at Ulm. 



344 NAPOLEON chap. 

Indeed, the position of the French army demanded all 
of Napoleon's firmness, all of his genius. He had about 
eighty thousand men ; the Emperors in his front had 
ninety thousand. His right was threatened by the Arch- 
duke Charles with an army of forty thousand ; his rear 
by the Archduke Ferdinand with twenty thousand ; on 
his left flank was unfriendly Prussia with a magnificent 
force of one hundred and fifty thousand. The com- 
bined armies in his front, taking the offensive, attacked 
the French advance guard at Wischau, and routed it. 
Napoleon was uneasy. He sent envoys to the Czar and 
sought a personal interview. Surrounded by young hot- 
heads, Alexander repulsed the overture, sending Dolgo- 
rouki to meet the Emperor of the French. Full of the idea 
that the French were frightened and would pay hand- 
somely for the privilege of getting back home, young 
Dolgorouki demanded of Napoleon the surrender of Italy, 
Belgium, and the Rhine provinces. 

" What more could you ask if you were in France ? " 
exclaimed the indignant Napoleon. The envoy's manner 
was as offensive as his language, and Napoleon finally 
ordered him off. Violently irritated, Napoleon stood 
talking to Savary for some time, striking the ground with 
his riding-whip, as he dwelt upon the insolence of the 
Russians. " Please God, in forty-eight hours I will give 
them a lesson ! " 

An old grenadier stood near, filling his pipe for a smoke. 
Napoleon walked up to him and said, " Those fellows think 
they are going to swallow us up." — " If they try it," said 
the veteran, "we'll stick in their craws." Napoleon 
laughed, and his brow cleared. 

Drawing his army back to a still better position, Napo- 



xxT EMPEEOR 346 

leon studied the ground thoroughly, reconnoitred dili- 
gently, and waited. He soon guessed the plan of the 
enemy, to turn his right flank. But to do this they must 
expose their own flank to him, and he would strike them 
as they marched. So confident was Napoleon that he 
could destroy his enemy if the turning movement across 
his front were attempted, that he lured them still farther 
by withdrawing from the high-ground, the Pratzen pla- 
teau — "a grand position," from which he could easily 
have inflicted upon the Russians an ordinary defeat. But 
an ordinary defeat was not what he wanted ; he manoeuvred 
to lead his foes into a false movement where they could 
be annihilated. 

On December 1, 1805, about four in the afternoon. 
Napoleon could see through his field-glass that the great 
turning movement of the Russians had commenced. He 
clapped his hands and exclaimed, " They are walking into 
a trap ; before to-morrow night that army will be mine ! " 

Ordering Murat to make a sham attack and then retire 
so as to confirm the enemy in his delusion of a French 
retreat. Napoleon dictated a stirring address to his troops, 
pointing out to them the Russian mistake and the advan- 
tage the French could take of it. Everything done that 
could be done, the great captain called his staff about 
him, and sat down to dinner in the hut which served him 
for a bivouac. Seated around the table on wooden 
benches were Murat, Caulaincourt, Junot, Rapp, Segur, 
Mouton, Thiard, and others. As serenely as though he 
were in Paris, Napoleon led the conversation to literary 
topics, dramatic poetry especially, and commented at length 
on the merits of various authors and plays. From these 
subjects he passed on to Egypt, and again spoke of the 



346 NAPOLEON chap. 

wonderful things he would have done had he taken 
Acre. He would have gained a battle on the Issus, be- 
come Emperor of the East, and returned to Paris by 
way of Constantinople. Junot suggested that they might, 
even now, be on the road to Constantinople. But Napo- 
leon said : " No. The French do not love long marches. 
They love France too well. The troops would prefer to re- 
turn home." Junot questioned this; but Mouton bluntly 
declared that the Emperor was right, that the army was 
tired out, it had had enough : it would fight, but would 
do so because it wished to win a battle which would end 
the war and allow the men to return home. 

Throwing himself upon some straw in his hut, Napoleon 
slept till far into the night. Then he mounted his horse, 
and once more went the rounds to see that all was right. 
He went too near the Russian lines : roused some Cossacks, 
and escaped capture by the speed of his horse. Getting 
back into his own lines, he was stumbling along on foot in 
the darkness when he fell over a log. A grenadier, to 
light his way, made a torch of some straw. The blaze 
showed to other soldiers the Emperor. Upon a sudden 
impulse, more torches were made of straw, while the shout 
arose, " Live the Emperor ! " It was the anniversary of 
the coronation, and the troops remembered. The one 
torch became a score, the score a hundred, then thousands, 
until a blaze of light ran along the line for miles, while 
the shout of " Live the Emperor ! " roused even the Rus- 
sian hordes. It was such an ovation as only a Csesar 
could inspire. It was so unstudied, so heartfelt, so mar- 
tial and dramatic, that Napoleon was profoundly moved. 
" It is the grandest evening of my life," he exclaimed. 

At dawn he called his staff to the hut, ate with them 



XXV EMPEKOR 347 

standing, and then, buckling on his sword, said, " Now, 
gentlemen, let us go and begin a great day! " A moment 
later he sat his horse on a hill that overlooked the field, 
his staff and his marshals around him. As the sun cleared 
itself of the mists, " the sun of Austerlitz," the final orders 
were given, the marshals galloped to their posts, and the 
famous battle began. By four o'clock that evening the 
Russo- Austrian army was a wreck — outgeneralled, out- 
fought, knocked to pieces. Napoleon had ended " this 
war by a clap of thunder." The Czar fled with the 
remnant of his host, escaping capture at the hands of 
Davoust by the well-worn falsehood of an armistice. 
The Emperor Francis came in person to Napoleon to sue 
for peace, was kindly received, and was granted terms far 
more liberal than he had any right to expect. 

On December 27, 1805, the Treaty of Presburg was 
signed. Austria ceded Venice, Friuli, Istria, and Dal- 
matia to Italy ; Tyrol to Bavaria, which Napoleon erected 
into an independent kingdom ; Wiirtemberg and Baden 
received cities and territory as rewards for adherence to 
France. Austria sanctioned all of Napoleon's recent en- 
croachments in Italy, and agreed to pay an indemnity of 
18,000,000. 

In the battle of Austerlitz the Allies lost about fifteen 
thousand men, killed and wounded, besides twenty thou- 
sand prisoners. The French loss was about twelve thou- 
sand. 

Marbot relates an incident which illustrates the character 
of Napoleon. 

One of the familiar episodes of the battle of Austerlitz 
was the retreat of the Russians over the frozen lakes. 
Napoleon himself ordered the cannoneers to cease shooting 



348 NAPOLEON chap, xxv 

at the fugitives, and to elevate their pieces so that the 
balls would fall upon the ice. The balls fell, the ice 
cracked, and some two thousand Russians sank to watery 
graves. 

Next day Napoleon, being near this spot, heard feeble 
cries for help. It was a Russian sergeant, wounded, adrift 
in the lake, supporting liimself on an ice floe. Napoleon's 
sympathies were at once aroused, and he called for volun- 
teers to save the Russian. Many attempts were made, 
several Frenchmen came near being drowned, and finally 
Marbot and Roumestain stripped, swam to the man, and 
brought him to the shore. Napoleon had every attention 
shown to the poor fellow — the survivor of the host which 
sank the day before under his pitiless orders. 



CHAPTER XXVI 

TN England the wonderful triumph of Napoleon spread 
consternation and bitter disappointment. So much 
hard cash had been wasted, so many well-laid plans 
smashed, so much blind hatred brought to nothing ! 
Other faces besides Pitt's took on "the Austerlitz look." 
That most arrogant of ministers had offered money to all 
who would unite against France, had encouraged Austria 
to attack Bavaria because of the refusal of Bavaria to 
enter the coalition against France, had landed English 
troops in Calabria to stir up the priest-ridden peasantry 
to insurrection, and had pledged himself to the task of 
driving the French from Germany, from Switzerland, 
from Italy and Holland. A mightier ruin had never 
fallen upon haughtier plans. The French were now mas- 
ters of more territory than ever ; Napoleon's power greater 
than ever ; England's allies were being dismembered to 
strengthen the friends of France ; and the British troops 
which had been sent to Calabria, and which had won the 
battle of Maida (July, 1806), abandoned the enterprise, 
and left the peasantry to suffer all the vengeance of the 
French. Whether Mr. Pitt's last words were, " My coun- 
try ! How I leave my country! " or, as Mr. D'Israeli used 
to relate, " I think I could now eat one of Bellamy's pork 
pies," it is certain that he took the news of Austerlitz as 
Lord North took Saratoga, "like a ball in the breast." 

349 



350 NAPOLEON chap. 

On the Continent Napoleon was supreme, and he used 
his advantage vigorously. The Bourbons of Naples had 
played him false, and he dethroned them. In western 
Germany was organized the Confederation of the Rhine, 
composed of Bavaria, Baden, Wiirtemberg, and thirteen 
smaller principalities, and containing a population of eight 
million. Created by Napoleon, it looked to him for pro- 
tection, put its military forces at his service, and became, 
practically, a part of his imperial system. 

By these changes the Emperor of Austria was reduced 
to his hereditary dominions, and his shadowy Holy Ro- 
man Empire ceased to exist, August 6, 1806. 

Following Austerlitz came a grand distribution of 
crowns and coronets. Brother Joseph condescended to 
become King of Naples, with the distinct understanding 
that he waived none of his " rights " to the throne of 
France, and that he should be treated as an "indepen- 
dent ally " of the Emperor. 

Holland was turned into a subject kingdom, and Louis 
Bonaparte put upon its throne. 

To his sister Elisa, Napoleon gave additional territory 
in Italy ; and to Pauline, who had married Prince Bor- 
ghese, was given Guastalla. Madame Bacciochi, who was 
morally another Caroline of Naples, was a good ruler, and 
her government of her little kingdom was excellent. As 
to Pauline, she cared for nothing but pleasure ; and not 
knowing very well what else to do with her Guastalla, 
she sold it. 

Caroline Bonaparte, importunate in her demands for 
imperial recognition, was offered the principality of Neuf- 
chatel. She haughtily declined it. Such a petty king- 
dom was obviously, even glaringly, less than her share. 



XXVI DISTRIBUTION OF HONORS 351 

Yielding to this youthful and self-assertive sister, Napo- 
leon had to create the Grand Duchy of Berg to satisfy 
her and her no less aspiring husband, Murat. 

The scapegrace Jerome Bonaparte, one of whose num- 
berless freaks was that of paying $3,000 for a shaving 
outfit long prior to the arrival of his beard, was made to 
renounce his beautiful young American wife, Miss Patter- 
son ; and was kept in imperial tutelage till such time as 
he should be made king of Westphalia, with a Wiirtem- 
berg princess for queen. 

Eugene Beauharnais, Viceroy of Italy, was married to 
the daughter of the king of Bavaria ; and Stephanie 
Beauharnais, Josephine's niece, was wedded to the son of 
the Elector of Baden. 

In these grand arrangements for the Bonaparte family, 
Lucien was left out. He and Napoleon had quarrelled, 
the cause being, chiefly, that Lucien would not discard 
his wife, as the pusillanimous Jerome had done. Napo- 
leon was offended because Lucien at his second marriage 
had selected a woman whose virtue was far from being 
above suspicion. " Divorce her," demanded Napoleon ; 
"she is a strumpet." 

" Mine is at least young and pretty," retorted Lucien, 
with sarcastic reference to Josephine, who was neither 
young nor pretty. Angrily the brothers parted : the elder 
insisting on the divorce, and offering a kingdom as a bribe : 
the younger scornfully spurning the bribe, and cleav- 
ing to his wife. This manly and independent attitude 
was the easier to maintain since Lucien had already 
amassed a fortune in Napoleon's service. Taking up his 
residence in a grand palace in Rome, surrounded by rare 
books, paintings, and statuary, comforted by the prefer- 



362 NAPOLEON chap. 

ence and the presence of Madame Letitia, a favorite of 
the Pope because an enemy of Napoleon, Lucien culti- 
vated letters, wrote the longest and the dullest epic of 
modern times, and called it Charlemagne. 

While elevating to thrones the members of his family, 
the Emperor could not forget those who had served him 
in the army and in civil affairs. From the conquered 
territories he carved various principalities, duchies, and so 
forth, for distribution among the Talleyrands, Bernadottes, 
and Berthiers, who were to betray him later. A new 
order of nobility sprang up at the word, — a nobility based 
upon service, and without special privilege, but richly en- 
dowed, and quick to arrogate to itself all the prestige ever 
enjoyed by the old. 

Surrounded as he was by hostile kings, Napoleon felt 
the need of supports. In creating the Confederation 
of the Rhine, in putting his brothers upon adjacent 
thrones, in bestowing fiefs upon his high officials, he 
believed himself to be throwing out barriers against for- 
eign foes, and propping his empire with the self-interest 
and resources of all these subject princes whom he had 
created, never dreaming that in the day of adversity his 
ov/n brothers and sisters would think of saving themselves 
at his expense. 



On the very night of Napoleon's return to Paris from 
the army, he summoned his council. The finances were 
in confusion ; there had been something of a panic, and 
only the victory of Austerlitz restored confidence. The 
minister, who had brought about this state of things by his 
mismanagement, was Barb^-Marbois, a royalist whom Na- 



xxTi DISTRIBUTION OF HONORS 353 

poleon had recalled from banishment and elevated to high 
office. During the Emperor's absence the minister had al- 
lowed the contractors and speculators to become partners in 
the management of the treasury, had allowed these specula- 
tors to use public funds, and had carried his complaisance 
to such an extent that they now owed the government more 
than 125,000,000. Under the Old Regime it was quite 
the usual thing to allow contractors and speculators to 
use and misuse public funds. In our own day it is the 
universal rule. No well-regulated Christian government 
would think of issuing a loan, undertaking public im- 
provements, or refunding its debt without giving to some 
clique of favored capitalists a huge share of the sum 
total : just as it would shock a modern government to its 
foundation if the principle were enforced that public funds 
should be rigidly kept in public depositories to be used 
for public purposes only. 

Napoleon, however, was neither a ruler of the ancient 
Bourbon type, nor a Christian governor of the modern 
sort. He would not float loans, levy war taxes, nor allow 
his treasury to become the hunting-ground of the Bourse. 
England was fighting Napoleon with paper money, was 
floating loan after loan, was giving to speculators and 
contractors golden opportunities to enrich themselves. 
In the end, England's paper money, loans, and war taxes 
were to whip the fight ; but in the meantime Napoleon 
believed himself right and England wrong. He honestly 
believed that England would sink under her debt, taxes, 
and worthless currency. When he saw her grow in 
strength year by year, her manufactures increase, her 
trade increase, her wealth, power, and population in- 
crease, he was unable to comprehend the mystery. Mr. 

2a 



354 NAPOLEON chap, xxvi 

Alison, the Tory historian, who chronicles the facts, ex- 
plains, kindly, that this growth of England was illusive 
and fictitious. To Napoleon, sitting desolately on the 
rock at St. Helena, housed in a remodelled cow barn and 
tormented by rats, it must have seemed that this paper- 
money growth of English power was not quite so illusive 
as Mr. Alison declared. 

Sternly adhering to his own system. Napoleon called the 
erring minister and the greedy speculators to account. 
Marbois was dismissed from office, the speculators thrown 
into jail, the property of the syndicate seized, and the 
debt due the treasury collected. The Bank of France 
was overhauled, the finances put into healthy condition, 
and the public funds advanced until they commanded a 
higher price than ever before, neariug par. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

A FTER the treaty of Presburg the Archduke Charles, 
in paying off the Austrian troops, said to them, " Go 
and rest yourselves until we begin again." Even at that 
early date the European powers were acting upon the 
fixed principle that the war against France was not to 
cease till she had been forced back into her ancient 
limits. No matter what battles might be fought, treaties 
made, and territories yielded, the one thing upon which 
En'gland, Austria, and Russia were agreed, was that Napo- 
leon must be crushed. He represented the New Order 
brought forth by the Revolution. He represented liber- 
alism, civil and religious freedom, and progress in its mod- 
ern sense of giving to every man a chance in life. Such 
principles were destructive to the repose of Europe, and 
the ruling classes in Europe were deeply attached to this 
repose. England's ruling class, supported in lordly pre- 
eminence by the patient millions below them, wanted no 
levelling tendencies to invade her caste-ridden isles. Ger- 
many, whose nobles and landowners clung to all the 
privileges and barbarities of feudalism, abhorred the 
Code Napoleon, and the democratic germs of the Napole- 
onic system. Russia, almost as benighted as Persia or 
Turkey, dreaded a trend of events which meant freedom 
for the serf and civil rights for the common people. 
The nobleman in Russia, the peer of Great Britain, the 

355 



356 NAPOLEON chap. 

petty lord in Germany, was at heart one and the same 
man. He had been born to wealth, privilege, and 
power ; he meant to keep what birth had given him, and 
he meant to pass it on to his son, " forever in fee simple." 
Of course he explained that God had ordained it so. 
And what the nobleman asserted, the priest maintained. 
If Napoleon foresaw that as Consul war would be made 
upon him continually by the opposing systems of Europe, 
how much less hope was there for peace now, when he 
had begun to shatter the ancient feudalisms? 

Let crimination and recrimination exhaust itself, let 
Thiers write bulky volumes in Napoleon's favor, while 
Lanfrey and Baring-Gould print heavy pamphlets against 
him, the truth lies here : — 

Napoleon represented principles which were considered 
ruinous to the Old Order in Europe, and the beneficiaries 
of that Old Order were determined not to surrender with- 
out a desperate fight. Just as the Old Order in France 
resisted all efforts at reform, so on a wider field the 
kings and aristocracies of Europe resisted Napoleon. 
They could not believe themselves safe while he was 
aggressive and triumphant. Therefore, while Austria 
might bow to the storm, while the Emperor Francis 
might come to Napoleon's tent, pleading for mercy, and 
get it, the true sentiment of Austria was voiced by the 
Archduke Charles, when he said to the troops, " Go rest 
yourselves, my children, till we begin again." It was 
only a question of time and opportunity when they would 
begin again. 

Prussia had been one of the first nations to arm against 
revolutionary France. Lugged in by Austria, she had 
published the famous proclamation of Brunswick, had 



XXVII JENA 857 

invaded France, and had been beaten back at Valmy. In 
due time Prussia had become disgusted with the French 
royalists — tired of a contest in which, gaining no glory, she 
lost men, money, and prestige. She had made peace with 
the Republic, and had become honestly neutral. Harmo- 
nious relations had continued to exist between the two 
nations until the rupture of the Peace of Amiens. Eng- 
land had then done her utmost to draw Prussia into the 
third Coalition, but had not quite succeeded. In the 
grand strategy leading to the climax at Ulm, it had be- 
come necessary to march some French troops through 
Anspach, a Prussian province. This violation of his ter- 
ritory gave great offence to the young King Frederick 
William IV., and he threatened war. 

Napoleon's crushing blows on Austria intimidated 
Prussia and made her hesitate; but when the French 
risked themselves in Moravia, and the outlook for Napo- 
leon began to grow gloomy, Prussia sent him her minis- 
ter, Haugwitz, bearing an ultimatum. Napoleon realized 
his peril, postponed immediate action, and fought the 
battle of Austerlitz. His victory released him from 
danger, and Haugwitz, forgetting his ultimatum, poured 
forth congratulations. Napoleon heard them with a 
sardonic amusement he did not conceal, bluntly declaring 
that Austerlitz had changed the Prussian tone. 

When the Confederation of the Rhine was about to be 
formed, Napoleon, by the treaty of Vienna, ceded Hanover 
to Prussia partly in return for Anspach and Bayreuth. 
Hanover being the personal domain of the King of Eng- 
land, its cession to Prussia was a fair guarantee against 
Prussian and English cooperation. That he gave so rich 
a bribe to Prussia proves his earnestness in seeking her 



358 . NAPOLEON chap. 

friendship. Those who criticise Napoleon's politics, dwell 
on his imprudence in not separating England from the 
Continent. The critics say that he ought to have known 
that he was not strong enough to combat combined Europe. 
The probabilities are that Napoleon understood the situa- 
tion quite as well as those divines and college professors 
who now criticise him. How was he to get Continental 
Europe on his side save by force of arms ? Had he not 
tried treaties with Naples and Austria ? Had he not ex- 
hausted conciliation with Russia and Prussia ? In what 
way was he to cripple England if not by shutting her out 
of the Continent, and how could he do that without using 
force ? His navy was gone ; England had rejected his 
repeated overtures for peace ; her gold bribed European 
diplomats and cabinets to wage war upon him : how was 
he to deal with armies hurled against him if he did not 
fight them ? Unite the Continent against England ! That 
was precisely what he was trying to do, and England knew 
it. Hence her bribes, hence successive wars. Ever and 
ever it was Napoleon's hope to win his way to a Conti- 
nental league against England, forcing her to peace, and 
to the terms she had made at Amiens. 

The inherent antagonism of the European monarchs to 
Napoleon was shown when the Czar visited Berlin in 1805, 
and at the tomb of Frederick the Great vowed alliance 
and friendship to the Prussian king. 

In 1806 that pledge was solemnly repeated, the Czar and 
the King having broken it a good deal in the interval. 
Whether the last oath would amount to more than the 
first, would depend upon circumstances; but the formal act 
proved at least how instinctive and vehement was their 
antagonism to Napoleon. 



XXTII 



JENA 359 



After Mr. Pitt's death, Fox succeeded him in the min- 
istry, and almost immediately Napoleon again made over- 
tures for peace. There was much less hope of it now, for 
the situation had greatly changed. Passions on both sides 
the Channel were at white heat, territorial distributions 
had been made which it would be difficult to unmake, and 
Fox, as a known friend of Napoleon, might find himself 
unable to make concessions which Pitt could safely have 
offered. 

Of course, England would demand that Hanover be re- 
stored ; Malta, she would certainly keep. In the temper 
which the newspapers had created in England, no minis- 
ter would have dared now to surrender that island. But 
still peace was possible. Equivalents for Malta might be 
arranged. As to Hanover, Napoleon might take it from 
Prussia, giving her something just as good in exchange. 
The negotiations were set on foot, through Lord Yar- 
mouth, one of the Englishmen who had been held in 
France at the beginning of the war. When Prussia 
learned that Napoleon was using Hanover as a bait to 
England, her smothered ill-will burst into flames. Vio- 
lent talk, violent pamphlets, broke out in Prussia, and 
Davoust intensified matters by having Palm, the book- 
seller of Naumberg, shot, because he had circulated incen- 
diary documents against the French. 

The war feeling rose irresistibly. Even had the King 
been inclined to oppose it, he could not have done so. His 
Queen, his army chiefs, his nobles, his troops, his people 
— they all clamored for war. 

The young officers at Berlin whetted their swords on 
the steps of the French embassy, and broke the windows 
of Prussian ministers who favored peace. 



360 NAPOLEON chap. 

Napoleon was at Paris when the news came that the 
Prussian hotheads had been sharpening their blades in 
front of his embassy. His hand went to his sword-hilt : 
" They will learn that our swords need no whetting — the 
insolent braggarts ! " 

So confident were the Prussians, so impatient were 
they to hurl themselves into the struggle, that they 
would not wait for Russian aid. Apparently they 
feared that Prussia might have to divide the glory. 
Was not theirs the army of Frederick the Great ? Was 
not their cavalry the finest in Europe ? Had not General 
Riichel announced on parade that the army of his Majesty 
of Prussia possessed several commanders who were the 
equals of Bonaparte ? Why await Russia ? The delay 
would put Napoleon on his guard. At present he was 
unsuspicious of immediate attack. Prussian diplomats 
had lulled him with assurances that their preparations 
were a mere pretence. There were a few scattered French 
forces in Bavaria; Prussia could hurl her two hundred 
thousand veterans upon Saxony, absorb the Saxon forces, 
and brush the French out of Germany before Napoleon 
could help himself. So thought the Prussian war party, 
at the head of which was the Queen and Prince Louis, 
brother of the King. On horseback, clad in uniform. 
Queen Louisa appeared at the head of the army, fanning 
the war fever into flames. Prince Louis took high com- 
mand for active service, and the old Duke of Brunswick 
(he of the famous manifesto of 1792 and of Valmy) tot- 
tered forth under the weight of his fourscore years to 
suggest bold plans which he lacked the vigor to prosecute. 
While Prussian cohorts were mustering and marching 
upon Saxony, the Prussian ambassador in Paris was still 



xxvn JENA 361 

playing a confidence game on Napoleon. At last Prussia 
launched an ultimatum giving the Emperor of the French 
until October 8 to save himself by submission. The Prus- 
sian army, one hundred and thirty thousand strong, con- 
centrated near Jena ; the French seemed at their mercy, 
the chief dispute among the Prussian commanders being 
whether they should wait till after the date fixed by the 
ultimatum to pass the Thuringian Forest and attack the 
enemy. When the ultimatum reached Paris, Napoleon 
was gone, was on the Rhine, was ready to launch two 
hundred thousand men upon the now amazed and bewil- 
dered Prussians. The great Emperor had not for a 
moment been deceived. All the time that he had been 
listening with placid face to the lies of the Prussian dip- 
lomat, he had been massing troops where they were needed. 
When the courier caught up with him and delivered the 
ultimatum, he laughed at it. With masterly speed he 
threw himself upon the Prussian flank and rear. Prussia 
had repeated the mistake of Austria ; her losses were even 
more ruinous. Prince Louis, attacking Lannes at Saalf eld 
(October 10), was routed and killed. 

When Napoleon reached Jena with his main army of 
ninety thousand men, he supposed that the bulk of the 
Prussians were before him. Cautious as ever, he sought 
the advantage of position, and secured it. A Saxon parson 
showed him a secret path to the heights commanding the 
Prussian position, and during the night this path was made 
practicable for artillery. When day dawned (October 14, 
1806), the unequal battle commenced, the French outnum- 
bering the enemy two to one. Hohenlohe, the Prussian 
commander, was almost annihilated, the remnants of his 
army fleeing in wild disorder. 



362 NAPOLEON chap, xxvn 

At the same time Davoust with twenty -seven thousand 
French fought the main Prussian force, about double his 
own, at Auerstadt. Badly commanded by the Duke of 
Brunswick and the King of Prussia, the Germans fought 
with desperate valor, but were utterly beaten. Broken 
and driven, they fled from the field, making for Weimar, 
and ran into the masses of fugitives who were flying from 
the field of Jena. Murat's dreaded cavalry were in hot 
pursuit, and a scene of the wildest confusion followed. 
To the beaten army all hope was lost. There was no 
fixed line of retreat, no rallying-point, no master-mind 
in control. In hopeless fragments the fugitive host fell 
apart, and the relentless pursuit was never slackened until 
the last one of these bands had been captured. With in- 
credible ease and rapidity the Prussian monarchy had 
been brought to the dust. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

rriHERE is no doubt that Napoleon had more personal 
feeling against Prussia than against any foe he had 
heretofore met, England excepted. In fact, the manner 
in which Prussia had acted justified much of this enmity. 
She had tried to blow hot and cold, run with the hare and 
hold with the hounds in so shameless a manner that even 
Charles Fox, the sweetest tempered of men, had de- 
nounced her to the English Parliament in the bitterest 
of terms. She had toyed with England, sworn and broke 
faith with Russia, dallied with and deluded Austria, trifled 
with and played false to Napoleon, and finally, after tak- 
ing the Hanover bribe from him, had sent the Duke of 
Brunswick to St. Petersburg to assure Alexander that 
Frederick William III. was still his friend, and that the 
apparent alliance with Napoleon meant no more than that 
Prussia was glad to get Hanover. 

It is no wonder that Napoleon had declared that 
Prussia was for sale to the highest bidder, and that she 
would be his because he would pay most. He had paid 
the price, — Hanover. When he saw that Prussia meant 
to keep the price, and not the contract, his feeling was that 
of the average man who finds that where he thought he 
had made a good trade, he has been swindled. 

Therefore, when the Queen of Prussia, Prince Louis, 

the Duke of Brunswick, and the war party generally, 

363 



364 NAPOLEON char 

showed their determination to break faith with him ; 
when the young officers insulted his embassy ; when the 
Prussian army launched themselves against a member of 
his Confederation of the Rhine, Napoleon was genuinely 
incensed. They had shown him no consideration, and he 
was inclined to show them none. 

He roughly denounced the conduct of the Duke of 
Weimar, when speaking to the Duchess in her own pal- 
ace ; but when she courageously defended her absent hus- 
band. Napoleon's better nature prevailed, he praised her 
spirit, and became her friend. 

The Duke of Brunswick, mortally wounded at Auer- 
stadt, sent a messenger to Napoleon praying that his 
rights as Duke of Brunswick might be respected. Napo- 
leon answered that he would not spare the duke, but 
would respect the general ; that Brunswick would be 
treated as a conquered province, but that the Duke him- 
self should have that consideration shown him which, as an 
old man and a brave soldier, he deserved. At the same 
time, and as additional reason for not sparing the Duke as 
a feudal lord. Napoleon reminded him of the time when he 
had advanced into France with fire and sword, and had pro- 
claimed the purpose of laying Paris in ashes. The son of 
the dying Duke took this natural reply much to heart, and 
swore eternal vengeance against the man who sent it. 

Napoleon understood very well that the war had been 
brought on by the feudal powers in Germany, — those 
petty lords who had dukedoms and principalities scat- 
tered throughout the land, miniature kingdoms in which 
these lords lived a luxurious life at the expense of the 
peasantry. These feudal chiefs were desperately opposed 
to French principles, and dreaded the Confederation of 



XXVIII ENTRY INTO BERLIN 365 

the Rhine. Every elector, prince, duke, or what not, ex- 
pected, with trembling, the day when he might be " medi- 
atized," and his little monopoly of a kingdom thrown into 
the modernized confederation. Hence their eagerness for 
war, and hence Napoleon's bitterness toward them. It 
went abroad that he said that he would make the nobles 
of Prussia beg their bread. He may have said it, for 
by this time he was no longer a mute, all-concealing 
sphinx. He had become one of the most talkative of 
men; therefore, one of the most imprudent. Unfortu- 
nately, he did nothing to separate the cause of the German 
people from that of the German nobles. His heavy hand 
fell upon all alike; and it was his own fault that the na- 
tional spirit of Germany rose against him finally, and helped 
to overthrow him. Not only did he speak harshly, impru^ 
dently of the Prussian nobles, he committed the greater 
blunder of reviling the Queen. True, she had well-nigh 
said, as a French empress said later, " This shall be my 
war ! " She had inspired the war party by word and by 
example. In every way known to a beautiful young sov- 
ereign, she had made the war craze the fashion. She had 
done for Prussia what Eugenie afterward did for France, — 
led thousands of brave men to sudden death, led her coun- 
try into a colossal smash-up. Eugenie's husband, swayed 
by an unwomanly wife, lost his liberty and his throne. 
By a mere scratch did Louisa's husband, as blindly led, 
escape the same fate. A brazen but patriotic lie, told by 
old Bliicher to the French general, Klein, — " an armistice 
has been signed," — saved Frederick William III. from 
playing Bajazet to the French Tamerlane. A political 
woman was ever Napoleon's "pet aversion." In his creed 
the place held by women was that of mothers of numerous 



366 NAPOLEON chap. 

children, breeders of stout soldiers, wearers of dainty toi- 
lets, companions of a lustful or an idle hour, nymphs of 
the garden walks, sirens of the boudoir, nurses of the 
sick, comforters of grief, censer bearers in the triumphal 
progress of great men. A woman who would talk war, 
put on a uniform, mount a horse, and parade at the head 
of an army, aroused his anger and excited his disgust. 
This feeling was the secret of his dislike to the Queen of 
Prussia, and of his ungentlemanly references to her in his 
bulletins. But while those references were such as no 
gentleman should have made, they were infinitely more 
delicate than those in which the royalist gentlemen of 
Europe were constantly alluding to Napoleon's mother, 
his sisters, his wife, his step-daughter, and himself. It is 
only fair, in trying to reach just conclusions, to remember 
the circumstances and the provocations under which a 
certain thing is said or done. If we constantly keep in 
view this standard in weighing the acts and words of 
Napoleon, it will make all the difference in the world in 
our verdict. Napoleon was no passionless god or devil. 
His blood was warm like ours; his skin was thin like 
ours ; a blow gave him pain as it pains us ; slanders 
hurt him as they hurt us ; infamous lies told about his 
wife, sisters, and mother wrung from him the same pas- 
sionate outcries they would wring from us. And this 
fact also must be kept in mind : before Napoleon stooped 
to make any personal war upon his sworn enemies, he had 
appealed to them, time and again, to cease their personal 
abuse of him and his family. 

On October 27, 1806, Napoleon made his triumphal 
entry into Berlin, giving to the corps of Davoust the 
place of honor in the march. It was a brilliant spectacle, 



XXVIII ENTRY INTO BERLIN 367 

and the people of Berlin who quietly looked upon the scene 
were astonished to see the contrast between the Emperor's 
plain hat and coat, and the dazzling uniforms of his staff. 

Says Constant : " We came to the square, in the middle 
of which a bust of Frederick the Great had been erected. 
On arriving in front of the bust, the Emperor galloped 
half around it, followed by his staff, and, lowering the 
point of his sword, he removed his hat and saluted the 
image of Frederick. His staff imitated his example, and 
all the general officers ranged themselves in semicircle 
around the monument, with the Emperor. His Majesty 
gave orders that each regiment as it marched past should 
present arms." 

The Prince Hatzfeldt brought the keys of the city to 
the conqueror, and Napoleon at once organized a new 
municipal government, putting Hatzfeldt at the head of 
it. The Prince, instead of being faithful to the confidence 
Napoleon placed in him, used his position to gather infor- 
mation about French forces and movements. This informa- 
tion he forwarded to the fugitive king, Frederick "William. 
Hatzfeldt may not have realized that his conduct was that 
of a spy ; may not have understood that holding an office 
by Napoleon's appointment he must be loyal to Napoleon. 
Serving two masters under such circumstances was a 
risky business, and Hatzfeldt found it so. His letter 
to the King was intercepted, and brought to Napoleon. 
The Prince was about to be court-martialled and shot. 
Already the necessary orders had been given, when the 
Princess Hatzfeldt, wife of the accused, gained access 
to the palace, and threw herself at Napoleon's feet. A 
woman in tears — a genuine woman and genuine tears — 
Napoleon could never resist; and Hatzfeldt was saved, 



368 NAPOLEON chap. 

as the Polignacs had been, by the pleadings of a devoted 
woman. 

After Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington, confident now 
that he was the greatest man that ever walked upon the 
earth, bought Canova's statue of Napoleon, carried it to 
London, stood it up in his hall, and made of it a hat-rack, 
umbrella-stand, and cloak-holder. It would seem that 
the men who say that Napoleon had no generous, chivalrous 
instincts have failed to see in Wellington's conduct any 
evidence of indelicacy of feeling. These critics, however, 
are confident that, in seizing as trophies the sword and 
sash of Frederick the Great, as Napoleon did at this time, 
he committed a most outrageous act. It may fairly be 
argued that the rule as to trophies is not so clear as it 
might be. The law seems to be obscure, and the decisions 
conflicting. So far as can be gathered from a reading of a 
number of authorities, the rule seems to be that after a 
conqueror has overthrown his enemy, he can take what- 
ever his taste, fancy, and greed suggest. 

Of course we are here speaking of Christians — civ- 
ilized, complacent, watch-me-and-do-as-I-do Christians. 
It will be found that they have taken any sort of plunder 
which can be carted away. All over England is the loot 
of India ; all over Spain that of South America and 
Mexico ; and in sundry portions of these United States 
may be found articles of more or less value which used 
to belong to China or the Philippines. They — the Chris- 
tians — have taken the ornaments from the bodies of 
the wounded and the dead ; have wrenched from arms, 
and fingers, and necks, and ears, the jewels of man, 
woman, and child ; have robbed the temple and the 
shrine ; have not spared the idol, nor the diamonds 



XXVIII ENTRY INTO BERLIN 369 

that blazed in its eyes ; have taken sceptre, and sword, 
and golden throne ; have stripped the palace, and robbed 
the grave. A dead man of to-day and a dead man of 
thousands of years ago, are as one to the remorseless 
greed of the Christians. In the name of science the 
mummy is despoiled ; in the cause of " advancing civ- 
ilization " the warm corse of the Chinaman or the Fili- 
pino is rifled. When we find among the crown jewels 
of Great Britain the " trophies " wrenched from the liv- 
ing and the dead in Hindustan ; when we see the proud 
people of the high places wearing the spoil of Egyptian 
sepulchres, it is difficult to know where the line is which 
separates legitimate from illegitimate loot. Consequently, 
we are not certain whether Napoleon was right or wrong 
in robbing the tomb of Frederick the Great of the sash 
and sword. 

While at Berlin, Napoleon issued his famous Berlin 
Decree. The English, repeating the blow they had 
aimed at France during the Revolution, had (1806), by 
an " Order in Council," declared the entire coast of 
France in a state of blockade. In other words. Great 
Britain arrogated to herself the right to bottle up Napo- 
leon's Empire, the purpose being to starve him out. 

By way of retaliation, he, in the Berlin Decree, declared 
Great Britain to be in a state of blockade. It is curious to 
notice in the books how much abuse Napoleon gets for his 
blockade, and how little England gets for hers. Usually 
in trying to get at the merits of a fight for the purpose of 
fixing the blame, the question is, " Who struck the first 
blow ? " This simple rule, based on plain common sense, 
seems to be lost sight of here entirely. 

When England struck at Napoleon with a sweeping 

2b 



370 NAPOLEON chap. 

blockade which affected eight hundred miles of his coast, 
had he no right to strike back ? The Berlin Decree was 
no more than blow for blow. 

There can be no doubt that in this commercial war 
Napoleon got the worst of it. England suffered, but it 
was for the want of markets. Continental Europe suf- 
ered, but it was for the want of goods. 

Napoleon's Continental system, about which so much 
has been said, was, after all, nothing more than a pro- 
hibitory tariff. In course of time it would have produced 
the same effect as a prohibitory tariff. The Continent 
would have begun to manufacture those goods for whose 
supply it had heretofore depended upon England. In 
other words, the blockade, shutting off the supply of cer- 
tain cloths, leather goods, hardware, etc., would have forced 
their production on the Continent. A moderate tariff 
stimulates home production in the ratio that it keeps 
out foreign competition. A prohibitive tariff, shutting 
off foreign wares entirely, compels the home production of 
the prohibited articles. Napoleon's Continental system, 
prohibiting all English goods, would inevitably have built 
up manufactories of these goods on the Continent. Dur- 
ing the years when these enterprises would have been 
getting under way, the people of the Continent would 
have suffered immense loss and inconvenience ; but in 
the long run the Continent would have become the pro- 
ducer of its own goods, and Great Britain would have 
been commercially ruined. This Napoleon saw ; this the 
English Cabinet saw : hence the increasing bitterness with 
which this death struggle between the two went on. 

The great advantage of England was that she had the 
goods ready for market, and the Continent wanted them. 



XXVIII ENTKY INTO BEKLIN 371 

The enormous disadvantage of Napoleon was that he 
neither had the goods nor the men ready to take hold 
and manufacture them. The all-important now was on 
the side of England. The ink was hardly dry on the 
Berlin Decree before Napoleon himself had to violate it. 
He needed enormous supplies for his army in the winter 
campaign he was about to begin. Continental manufac- 
tories did not produce what he wanted, England did, and 
Napoleon's troops were supplied with English goods. 
What the master did, his minions could imitate. All 
along the coast French officials violated the law, sold 
licenses, winked at smuggling at so much per wink, and 
feathered their nests in the most approved and gorgeous 
style. The Continental system did great damage to 
England, since it drove her trade into tortuous, limited 
channels. It did great damage to the Continent, since 
it worked inconvenience to so many who needed Eng- 
lish goods, and so many who had Continental produce 
to sell to England. But it never had a fair test, did 
not have time to do its work, and therefore has been 
hastily called Napoleon's crowning mistake. Failing to 
get a fair trial for his system, it collapsed, and must there- 
fore be called a blunder ; but it must be remembered that 
its author believed he could get a fair trial for it ; that he 
worked with tremendous tenacity of purpose for many 
years to bring Continental Europe to accept and enforce 
it. Could he have done so, the candid reader must admit 
that he would have smitten England's manufactures, her 
commercial life, as with a thunderbolt. It should also be 
remembered that to Napoleon's policy, so much resisted 
then, France owes many of those manufactures which con- 
stitute her wealth at the present day. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

A FTER allowing his army a brief rest, Napoleon set 
out against the Russians. His troops entered Poland, 
and on November 28, 1806, Murat took possession of War- 
saw. The Poles received the French as deliverers. They 
believed that the dismemberment of their country by Aus- 
tria, Prussia, and Russia was to be at last avenged, and 
Poland once more to take its place among the nations. 
By thousands the bravest flocked to the French standards, 
as enthusiastic for Napoleon as were the French them- 
selves. 

It may be that in his treatment of Poland the Emperor 
made one of his huge mistakes. It may be that he here 
lost his one great opportunity of permanently curbing the 
three Continental powers, whose combined strength finally 
wore him out. Had Poland's resurrection as a nation 
been promptly proclaimed, had her crown been given to 
some born soldier, like Murat, Lannes, Soult, or Ponia- 
towski, he would have drawn to his physical support 
every man of Polish blood, and to his moral support the 
active approval of every liberal in the world. 

Across the path of Russia he would have thrown the 
living rampart of a gallant nation, fired by love of coun- 
try and a passion for revenge. With Turkey on one 
frontier, and united Poland on another, and the mighty 

372 



CHAP. XXIX WARSAW S73 

power of Napoleon ready to aid both, Russia's position 
would, apparently, have been desperate. In like manner, 
a united Poland, on the flanks of Austria and Prussia, 
would, apparently, have been the very best guarantee that 
those two nations would not invade France. 

In brief, had Napoleon decreed the liberty of Poland, 
he would have secured an ally whose strength and posi- 
tion were of vast importance to him, and whose need of 
his support would have kept her loyal. On the other 
hand, he would have incurred the lasting hatred of the 
three robber powers, and they would have had a common 
cause of union against him. This is what he realized, 
and this is what held him back ; but in the end his tem- 
porizing, inconsistent, I-will-and-I-won't policy did ex- 
actly that — brought upon him the lasting hatred of the 
three robber powers, and lost him the united support of 
Poland. For in order that his ranks might be recruited 
with Polish volunteers, he constantly dangled before the 
eyes of the unfortunate nation the prospect of indepen- 
dence. " Show yourselves worthy and then — ." In other 
words, rush to my eagles, fight my battles, die in my ser- 
vice, lavish your blood and your treasures upon me, and 
I will then consider whether Poland shall once more be- 
come a nation ! It is a sorry picture — this of the greatest 
man of history sporting with Polish hopes, rights, lives, 
destiny. 

Gallant men of this heroic nation gave him their lives 
— for Poland. At least one beautiful Polish woman gave 
him her honor — for Poland. He won part of the country 
because of his vague promises. He failed to win united 
Poland because his promises were vague. But the mere 
fact that Poland looked to Napoleon as its liberator, the 



374 NAPOLEON chap. 

fact that Poles trooped by thousands to fight for him, 
the fact that he erected Prussian Poland into the Grand 
Duchy of Warsaw, bore just the bitter fruit which Napo- 
leon was so anxious the tree should not bear — the union 
of the three powers which had despoiled Poland, and 
whose suspicion and hatred had been aroused past all 
remedy by his dalliance with the Poles. 

But these final results were all in the future as yet. 
For the time, Napoleon's plan worked well enough. He 
got all the help he needed from Poland without burning 
any bridges between him and the three powers. His atti- 
tude seemed to say to Russia, Austria, and Prussia, " See 
what I can do with these Poles if you provoke me too 
far ! " . Polish independence was artfully utilized in two 
ways ; to the Poles it was an aspiration rousing them to 
rush to the French eagles ; to the three powers it was a 
threat, warning them to come to terms with Napoleon. 

In the game of national chess, Poland thus became a 
mere pawn on the board. From any moral point of view 
such a policy is infamous. And the indignation of the 
historian is deepened when he is forced to add that Napo- 
leon's conduct was but an imitation of the statecraft of 
former times, just as similar infamies of the present day 
are imitations of time-honored precedents of kings and 
cabinets. Cavour one day exclaimed, " What rascals we 
should be if we did for ourselves what we are doing for 
our country ! " He was referring to some especially dirty 
work (dirt and blood being copiously mixed), which he 
had been doing in copartnership with Napoleon III. in 
bringing about Italian independence. The confession is 
worth remembering. Christian civilization has certainly 
reached a curious pass when its leading statesmen admit 



XXIX WARSAW 375 

that in statecraft they are continually doing things which 
would disgrace them as private citizens. 

In the Memoirs of the Princess Potocka there is a vivid 
picture of the Polish situation in the winter of 1807, the 
writer being in Warsaw at the time. 

" The 21st of November, in the morning, the arrival of 
a French regiment was announced. How shall I describe 
the enthusiasm with which it was received ? To under- 
stand such emotions properly one must have lost every- 
thing and believe in the possibility of hoping for 
everything — like ourselves. This handful of warriors, 
when they set feet on our soil, seemed to us a guarantee 
of the independence we were expecting at the hands of 
the great man whom nothing could resist. 

" The popular intoxication was at its height : the whole 
town was lit up as if by magic. That day, forsooth, the 
town authorities had no need to allot quarters to the new 
arrivals. People fought for them, carried them off, vied 
with each other in treating them best. Those of the 
citizens who knew no French, not being able to make 
themselves understood, borrowed the dumb language 
which belongs to all countries, and by signs of delight, 
handshakings, and bursts of glee made their guests com- 
prehend that they freely offered all their houses con- 
tained, cellars included. 

"Tables were even laid in the streets and squares. 
Toasts were drunk to Napoleon, to his Grand Army, to 
the Independence of Poland. There was hugging and 
kissing, and a little too much drinking." Next day came 
dashing Murat and his brilliant staff, with braided uni- 
forms, gold and silver lace, nodding plumes of red, white, 
and blue, and a good deal of rattle and bang, fuss and 



376 NAPOLEON chap. 

bustle, generally. A noisy cavalier was Murat, ostenta- 
tious, boastful, full of the reminiscences of his own me- 
teoric career. 

Lodged at the Hotel Raczynski, where there was a vile 
chimney which smoked, the Grand Duke of Berg left it, and 
quartered himself " in our house," — the palace Potocki, — 
where he bored the inmates with his loud manners, his 
theatrical airs, and his too frequent reference to his most 
recent feat of arms, — the storming and taking of Lubeck at 
the head of his cavalry. Murat gave the Warsaw people 
to understand that the Emperor would soon arrive, and 
would enter the city with a certain degree of pomp. The 
authorities bestirred themselves ; reared triumphal arches, 
composed inscriptions, ordered fireworks, plaited wreaths, 
and gave the usual warnings to poets and orators. The 
whole town was thrown into the private agony which is 
the prelude to a public and joyful reception. 

And after all the toil and suffering of preparing for 
the Emperor's triumphal entrance, what should he do but 
come riding into Warsaw on a shabby little post-horse, 
between midnight and day, with no one in attendance 
save Roustan, the Mameluke ! The imperial carriage had 
mired on the road, and Napoleon had left it sticking in 
the mud. When he reached Warsaw, all were asleep, and 
' the Emperor went to the sentry box himself to wake up 
the sentinel." 

That same evening the authorities of the city were 
;eceived by the Liberator, who talked to them graciously 
and volubly upon all topics excepting that of liberation. 
Upon this all-important subject he uttered nothing more 
than what are called "glittering generalities." Poland, 
it appeared, had not yet done enough. Poland must rouse 



XXIX WARSAW 377 

herself. " There must be devotion, sacrifices, blood. " 
Otherwise Poland would never come to anything. Run- 
ning on in his nervous, rapid way, Napoleon alluded to the 
great exertions he would have to make to bring the cam- 
paign to a prosperous end. But he was sure that France 
would do all he demanded of her. Putting his hands in 
his pockets, he exclaimed : " I have the French there. By 
appealing to their imagination I can do what I like with 
them I " 

The Polish magnates listened to this statement with 
considerable surprise, which pictured itself upon their 
faces. O.bserving this, Napoleon added, " Yes, yes, it is 
just as I tell you," and took snuff. 

Keenly disappointed as many of the Polish nobles were 
at Napoleon's doubtful attitude, the country generally 
was enthusiastic in its faith that he would, at the proper 
time, do the proper thing. Every want of the French 
was supplied. Where voluntary offerings fell short, 
forced contributions made good the difference. 

Warsaw had never been more brilliant. The heart of 
the doomed nation beat again. There were smiles, open 
hands, glad festivities. There were brilliant balls at 
Murat's ; brilliant balls at Talleyrand's ; brilliant balls 
at the palace of Prince Borghese ; brilliant receptions 
held by the Emperor. It must have been a spectacle 
worth seeing, — a ballroom in reawakened Warsaw, where 
the loveliest ladies of Poland and the bravest warriors 
of France danced the happy hours away. It must have 
been a sight worth seeing, — Talleyrand entering a grand 
reception hall filled with the notables of Poland and 
gravely announcing, " The Emperor ! " 

Well worth seeing was the stout, stunted figure, 



378 NAPOLEON chap. 

crowned by the pale, set, marble-like face and large head, 
which came into view at Talleyrand's announcement, and 
which stood within the doorway a moment to see and to 
be seen. 

Did lovely Polish women crowd about the mighty 
Emperor, listening for the least word in favor of Poland's 
independence ? Did fair patriots appeal by look and 
word to him, yearning for the magic names. Liberty, 
Freedom ? Vain the ardent, beseeching look ; vain the 
tender, seductive voice. It would not do at all. He had 
suspected that — had steeled himself against it ; and eager 
patriotism, voiced by women never so bewitching, could 
not break through that watchful guard. But as he leaves 
the room, he pauses again, and says to Talleyrand in a 
tone loud enough to be heard by all, " What pretty 
women ! " Then the imperial hand salutes the company, 
and the Liberator is gone ! 

It must have been a sight worth seeing, — that ball at 
Talleyrand's where Napoleon danced, and cultivated 
Madame Walewski, and where the imposing Talleyrand, 
with folded napkin under his arm, and gilt tray in his hand, 
humbly served his imperial master with a glass of lemonade. 

Army affairs called Napoleon to the front ; but after the 
bloody struggle at Pultusk, the weather stopped military 
movements. Continual rains had ruined the roads. 
Cannon stuck in the mire, soldiers perished in the bogs. 
Even Polanders had never seen anything equal to it. 

Napoleon returned to Warsaw quite serene, remarking, 
" Well, your mud has saved the Russians ; let us wait 
for the frost. " 

Busy with French affairs, Polish and Russian affairs, 
busy also and above all at this time with army affairs, the 



XXIX WARSAW 37* 

Emperor relaxed himself socially to a greater extent than 
usual, and made himself exceedingly agreeable. 

He entered into all the amusements, gossiped familiarly 
with all comers to his receptions, played whist, danced 
square dances, attended the concerts of his Italian orches- 
tra, and led the applai]Lse with zest and good taste. 

" How do you think I dance ? " he smilingly inquired of 
the young Princess Potocka. " I suspect you have been 
laughing at me." 

" In truth, sire," answered the adroit lady, " for a great 
man your dancing is perfect." 

Sitting down to whist, Napoleon turned to Princess 
Potocka at the moment the cards were dealt and 
asked : — 

" What shall the stake be ? " 

"Oh, sire, some town, some province, some kingdom." 

He laughed, looking at her slyly. 

" And supposing you should lose ? " 

"Your Majesty is in funds and will perhaps deign to 
pay for me." 

The answer pleased. He loved bold talk, prompt 
replies, definite answers. Halting, uncertain, indefinite 
people he could never endure. 

Answer quick and answer positively, and your reply, 
.though untrue, might please him better than if you hesi- 
tatingly told him the truth. 

The same lively writer gives another lifelike picture of 
Napoleon in one of his fits of ill temper. 

One day at Warsaw he received information that Gen- 
eral Victor, bearing important despatches, had been cap- 
tured by the Prussians. This piece of news enraged the 
Emperor. It chanced that upon the same day a Dutch 



380 NAPOLEON chap. 

delegation arrived to congratulate him upon the victory 
of Jena. They were admitted to audience just before the 
Emperor's regular reception. 

" It was near ten o'clock, and we (those in the reception 
room) had been awaiting a long time . . . when, the door 
being noisily thrown open, we saw the fat Dutchmen, in 
their scarlet robes, roll rather than walk in. The Em- 
peror was prodding them, exclaiming in rather loud tones, 
' Go on ! go on ! ' The poor envoys lost their heads, 
and tumbled all over each other." 

Princess Potocka says that she felt like laughing ; but 
when she looked at the Emperor's face, she did not dare. 

" The music soothed him quickly ; toward the end of 
the concert his gracious smile returned, and he addressed 
pleasant words to the ladies he liked best, before sitting 
down to his whist table. 

" Excepting foreign ministers, and some of the high func- 
tionaries at play, all stood while Napoleon sat. This did 
not displease Prince Murat, who lost no opportunity to 
pose and to strike attitudes which he judged appropriate 
to show off the beauty of his figure. But little Prince 
Borghese was enraged and still had not the courage to sit 
down." 

But the Emperor's amusements did not confine them- 
selves to such things as whist and quadrilles alone. A cer- 
tain Madame Walewski, " exquisitely pretty," " her laugh 
fresh, her eyes soft, her face seductive," caught the at- 
tention of the imperial visitor. " Married at sixteen to 
an octogenarian who never appeared in public, Madame 
Walewski's position in society was that of a young widow." 
She was " lovely and dull," tempting and not unyielding. 
Talleyrand's diplomacy is said to have done some very 



XXIX WARSAW 381 

humble work as go-between, and the Madame was soon 
known to be the Emperor's favorite. 

Josephine, hearing vague rumors of high-doings at the 
Polish capital, generously offered to brave the rigors of 
travel and season to join her absent spouse. In the gen- 
tlest manner in the world he insisted that she stay where 
she was. 

The gay time at Warsaw ended abruptly. Ney hav- 
ing made a dash at the Russians, without orders, Ben- 
nigsen roused himself to general action, and Napoleon went 
forth to one of the bloodiest battles in history — Eylau, 
February 8, 1807. Fought in a blinding snowstorm, the 
losses on both sides were frightful. So doubtfully hung 
the result that the Emperor himself escaped capture 
because he was concealed from view in the old churchyard. 
Augereau's corps, caught in the snow-drift, blinded by 
wind-driven sleet, and exposed point blank to deadly 
Russian fire, was annihilated. Only a desperate cavalry 
charge, led in person by Murat, checked the Russian 
advance. When darkness fell, the French were about to 
retreat when Davoust, laying ear to 'ground, heard the 
retiring rumble of Russian guns. So the French held 
their position and claimed the victory. The Russians, in 
retreat, also claimed it. 

On each side rose hymns and prayers of thanks and 
praise to God : Russians grateful that they had won; 
French rejoicing that they had prevailed. Benuigsen 
continued to retire ; Napoleon went back into winter- 
quarters ; and the only distinct and undisputed result of 
the battle was that some twenty-five thousand men lay 
dead under the snow. 

Napoleon did not return to Warsaw, but made his head- 



382 NAPOLEON chap. 

quarters at Osterode, where he shared all the discomforts of 
his soldiers while doing more work than any hundred men 
in the army. In spite of the dreadful weather and boggy 
roads, he was constantly on horseback, going at full speed 
from one outpost to another. Frequently he rode ninety 
miles during the day. With his own eyes he inspected the 
military situation down to the smallest details, untiring 
in his efforts to have his men well placed, well clothed, 
well fed. The sick and the wounded were indeed " his 
children." He spared no efforts in their behalf, and this 
was one of the secrets of the cheerfulness with which his 
soldiers made such sacrifices for him. Sometimes in the 
march when the weary legions were weltering through 
the mud, drenched with rain or pelted by sleet, or blinded 
by snow, hungry and homesick, murmurs would be heard 
in the ranks, complaints would even be thrown at the 
Emperor as he passed. But when the enemy was in 
sight, murmurs ceased. " Live the Emperor ! " was all 
the cry. They shouted it wherever they caught a 
glimpse of him on the field ; they shouted it as they 
rushed to battle ; 'and after the fight was over those 
who came forth unharmed, and those who were man- 
gled, and those who were about to die — all shouted, 
" Live the Emperor ! " Nothing like the devotion of the 
French soldier to Napoleon had ever been known be- 
fore, and not till another Napoleon comes will be seen 
again. 

The care of his army by no means filled all of the Em- 
peror's time : he ruled France from Poland, just as 
though he were at St. Cloud. Couriers brought and 
carried ministerial portfolios, brought and carried offi- 
cial reports and orders. Every detail of government 



XXIX WAESAW 383 

passed under the eye of the master, all initiative rested 
with him. 

Madame Walewski was brought secretly to headquar- 
ters, an indulgence Napoleon had never allowed himself 
before. While at Finckenstein, he received envoys from 
Persia and Turkey, and gravely discussed plans for an 
invasion of India. 

In June the Russians again took the offensive. Their 
commander-in-chief, Bennigsen, one of the murderers 
of the Czar Paul, had shown great courage and ability." 
At Pultusk he had beaten Lannes and Davoust ; at Eylau 
he had fought the Emperor to a standstill, and had carried 
away from that field twelve of the French eagles. 

Bennigsen renewed the war by an attack on Ney, 
whom he hoped to cut off. A hasty retreat of the 
French saved them. Then Napoleon came up, and the 
Russians retired. At Heilsberg they stood and fought, 
both sides losing heavily. At length the superiority 
of the French leader made itself felt. He lured Ben- 
nigsen into a false position, closed on him, and well- 
nigh crushed him, at the battle of Friedland, June 
14, 1807. This victory ended the campaign. The Rus- 
sians asked for an armistice, which was promptly granted. 
The two emperors. Napoleon and Alexander, met on a 
raft, moored in the Niemen, near Tilsit, June 25, 1807, 
embraced each other cordially, and, amid the rapturous 
shouts of the two armies drawn up on opposite sides of 
the river, commenced those friendly, informal conferences 
which led to peace. 

The town of Tilsit, having been made neutral ground, 
became the headquarters of the two emperors, who estab- 
lished their courts there, and lived together like devoted 



384 NAPOLEON chap,. 

personal friends. The poor fugitive, Frederick William 
of Prussia, was invited to come, and he came. Later 
came also his queen. 

On the 7th of July, 1807, the Treaty of Tilsit was signed. 

Prussia lost her Polish provinces, which were erected 
into the grand duchy of Warsaw, and given to the Elector 
of Saxony. A slice of this Polish Prussia, however, was 
bestowed on Alexander. Dantzic, which the French had 
taken, was declared a free city, to be garrisoned with 
French troops till maritime peace should be ratified. 
The Prussian dominions in lower Saxony and on the 
Rhine, with Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, and other small states 
were formed into the kingdom of Westphalia for the 
profligate Jerome Bonaparte. 

Ancient Prussia, as well as Silesia, was restored to 
Frederick William. 

Much ado has been made over Napoleon's alleged harsh- 
ness to Queen Louisa at Tilsit ; but a careful reading of 
the authorities proves that his only harshness consisted in 
declining to give to her that for which she asked. She 
went there to influence Napoleon by a beautiful woman's 
persuasions ; and she failed. In the nature of things, it 
could not have been otherwise. Having provoked the 
war, and having lost in the trial of arms, Prussia had to 
pay the penalty. The tears or cajoleries of Queen Louisa 
could not of course obliterate the hard political necessities 
of the case. Suppose the Empress Eugenie, in 1871, had 
gone in tears to Bismarck or to the Emperor William, 
could she have saved for France the provinces of Alsace 
and Lorraine ? Could she have reduced the war penalty 
from 11,000,000,000 to 11,000,000? Just such a task 
Queen Louisa undertook in 1807. 



XXIX WAESAW 386 

Beyond his refusal to be influenced, Napoleon was not 
guilty of any discourtesy to the Queen. On the contrary, 
he honored her with the most studious politeness and 
deference. 

By the Treaty of Tilsit, Russia bound herself to medi- 
ate between France and Great Britain. On his part, 
Napoleon agreed to mediate between Russia and Turkey. 

In secret articles, Russia bound herself to adopt Napo- 
leon's Continental system in the event that Great Britain 
refused to make peace. 

Furthermore, in that case, there was to be a northern 
confederation against England for the purpose of shutting 
her out of the Continent and of breaking her tyranny over 
the seas. 

Russia, in return for this promise, was to be allowed to 
conquer Finland, a province of vast importance to her. 

It is also stated by some authorities that Alexander 
agreed that Napoleon should do as he liked with Spain 
and Portugal ; while Napoleon consented that Alexander 
should be allowed to strip Turkey of Moldavia and Wal- 
lachia, provided Turkey refused his mediation. 



2c 



CHAPTER XXX 

A T this period (1807) Napoleon was a strikingly hand- 
some man. The " wan and livid complexion, bowed 
shoulders, and weak, sickly appearance " of the Vende- 
miaire period were things of long ago. The skin disease 
of the Italian campaign had been cured. Not yet fat and 
paunchy as he became toward the end, his form had 
rounded to a comely fulness, which did not impair his 
activity. The face was classic in profile, and in com- 
plexion a clear, healthy white. His chin was prominent, 
the jaw powerful, the head massive, being twenty -two 
inches round, according to Constant. The chestnut- 
colored hair was now thin, inclining to baldness on the 
crown. Worn long in his youth, he cut it short in the 
Egyptian campaign, and ever afterward continued to 
wear it so. His ears, hands, feet, were small and finely 
shaped. The nose was long, straight, well proportioned. 
His teeth were white and sound ; the lips beautifully 
moulded ; the expression about the mouth, when he 
smiled, being peculiarly sweet and winning. His eyes 
were gray-blue, and formed the striking feature of his 
face. All accounts agree that his glance was uncom- 
fortably steady and penetrating ; or, at other times, 
intolerably fierce and intimidating ; or, again, irresistibly 
soft, tender, magnetic. One is struck with the fact that 
so many who knew him, and loved him or hated him, 

386 



CHAP. XXX HABITS AND CHARACTERISTICS 387 

feared him or defied him, should emphasize the impres- 
sion made upon them by his eyes. Before that steady 
gaze, which seized and held attention, Lavalette said that 
he felt himself turning pale ; Decres lost all desire to be 
familiar ; Vandamme became a coward ; Augereau and 
Massena admitted they were afraid ; Madame de Stael 
grew embarrassed ; and Barras faltered into silence at his 
own table. Not many years ago there lived in Michigan 
a battered veteran of the Italian wars, one who had been 
with Napoleon the day he, reconnoitred Fort Bard, which 
had checked the army ; and this old soldier's recollection 
of Napoleon had dwindled down to the wonderful eyes 
which had fixed him as though they would pierce the very 
innermost fibre. During the year 1900 there died in 
London an aged man, who as a boy had seen Napoleon 
at St. Helena ; and his recollection of the fallen Emperor 
hung upon the same feature, — the eyes. 

Generally, the expression of Napoleon's face was that 
of a student, — mild, pensive, meditative, intellectual. 
In moments of good humor, his smile, glance, voice, were 
caressing, genial, even fascinating. In anger, his look 
became terrible ; a rotary movement took place between 
the eyes, and the nostrils distended. All agree that in 
conversation there was such a play of feature, such quick 
changes of expression, such mirroring of the mind upon 
the face, that no description or portrait could convey an 
idea of it. Only those who had talked with him could 
realize it. But it is also agreed that when he wished to 
banish all expression, he could do that also, and his face 
then became a mask. 

His voice was sonorous and strong. In anger it became 
harsh and cruelly cutting. In his best mood it was as soft 



388 NAPOLEON chap, 

and wooing as a woman's. His general appearance, then, at 
this time, was that of a well-built man, below the medium 
height, but powerfully moulded, the bust, neck, and head 
being massive, and the legs somewhat short for the trunk. 
Unfriendly critics called him stunted, his stature being 
about five feet, three inches. 

He was inclined to be round-shouldered, and, when 
walking meditatively, he slightly stooped. In talking he 
gesticulated freely, sometimes violently; when in repose 
the hands were folded behind him, or across the breast, 
or one would rest within the waistcoat and the other 
behind him. 

It is doubtful whether any true portrait of Napoleon 
exists. He has been idealized and caricatured until 
the real Napoleon may have been lost. If the death 
mask claimed to have been taken by Antommarchi is 
genuine, one must surrender tlie belief that Napoleon's 
head was massive, his brow imperial, his profile per- 
fect ; for this mask exhibits a forehead which recedes, 
and which narrows above the temples. It shows the 
high cheek-bones of the American Indian, and the skull 
itself is commonplace. But this is not the Napoleon 
pictured in the portraits and Memoirs of his contempora- 
ries. According to friend and foe, his head was mas- 
sive, in fact too large to be in symmetry with his body. 
Madame Junot speaks of that "brow fit to bear the 
crowns of the world." Bourrienne, Meneval, and num- 
bers of others speak of the magnificent forehead and 
classic face. And yet there are two or three fugitive 
portraits of Napoleon which are so different from the 
orthodox copies, and so much like the Antommarchi's 
death-mask, that one knows not what to believe. 



XXX HABITS AND CHAEACTEEISTICS . 389 

Napoleon was very temperate in eating and drinking. 
He preferred the simplest dishes, drank but little wine, 
and that weakened with water. Coffee he drank, but not 
to excess. He ate fast, and used his fingers oftener than 
his fork. He was very sensitive to cold, and could not 
bear the least light in his room at night. He slept a 
good deal, from six to eight hours per day ; and usually 
took a nap during the afternoon or evening. His stand- 
ing order to his private secretary was a model of wisdom, 
" Never wake me to hear good news, that will wait ; but in 
case of bad news wake me at once, for there is no time to 
be lost." Another rule of his was to sleep over a matter 
of doubt. "Night is a good counsellor." 

While his nerves were very irritable, his pulse was 
slow and regular. He declared that he had never felt his 
heart beat. Medicine he detested and would not take. 
When ill, he left off food, drank barley water, and took 
violent exercise. He could not bear the least tightness 
in his clothing. His garments were of the softest, finest 
material, and cut loose. His hats were padded, his boots 
lined with silk, and both hats and boots were " broken " 
for him before he wore them. His favorite trousers were 
white cassimere, and a habit he had of wiping his pen on 
his breeches made a new pair necessary every morning. 
His taking of snuff consisted merely in smelling it. He 
used tobacco in no other form. 

Extremely careful in business matters, he was dis- 
orderly in some personal details. In undressing he flung 
his clothes all about the room, and sometimes broke his 
watch in this way. Newspapers and books which he had 
been reading were scattered around in confusion. In 
shaving, he would never allow both sides of his face 



390 NAPOLEON chap. 

to be lathered at the same time : one cheek was finished 
before the other was touched. He had a habit of poking 
the fire with his foot, and burnt out many a pair of boots 
in so doing. Excessively fond of the hot water bath, 
he opened letters, read newspapers, and received callers 
while splashing around in the tub. On leaving the bath, 
his valet rubbed him down, using the flesh brush and 
coarse cloths, and then dressed him. The most self- 
helpful of men in matters of importance, he was one of 
the least so in this. He depended upon servants for 
almost everything connected with the care of his person. 
" Rub me hard ! Scrub me as though I were an ass ! " he 
would call to his valet, while he stood almost naked, and 
with a red bandanna handkerchief knotted about his head. 
He loved cologne-water and drenched himself with quan- 
tities of it. One of the privations he keenly felt at St. 
Helena was the lack of cologne. Other perfumes he de- 
tested, and Constant relates a curious incident of Napo- 
leon calling to him one night to take out of his room 
a certain young lady who had been brought there, and 
who was " killing me with her perfume." 

With his elevation to empire. Napoleon became more 
stately, reserved, dignified, and imposing ; but perfect ease 
and repose of manner he never acquired. The indolent, 
calm, and studied air of languor and fatigue which, accord- 
ing to a well-known standard, constitutes good-breeding, 
he did not have. Perhaps he did not realize its tremen- 
dous value. Nervous, intense, electrical, pulsing with vital 
power, tossed by colossal ideas, ambitions, purposes, it 
was never possible for him to become a self-complacent 
formality, posing with studiously indolent grace, and ut- 
tering with laborious ease the dialect of polite platitude. 



XXX HABITS AND CHAEACTERISTICS 391 

But the man never lived who knew better how to talk, 
how to write, how to say what he meant. He could ad- 
dress mobs, committees, state councils, senates, armies, 
peoples, and kings. Who that ever lived excelled him 
in speaking to soldiers ? Verily the lines are yet hot in 
his proclamations, and he who reads them even now will 
feel the magnetic thrill. How they must have inspired 
the soldiers then ! 

His speeches to the councils and the Senate were models 
in their way ; his state papers have not been excelled ; 
his diplomatic correspondence measures up the loftiest 
standards. In truth, his language varied with the subject 
and the occasion. He could be as elegantly gracious as 
any Bourbon, if the occasion required it. If it became 
needful to call a spade a spade, he could do it, and with 
a vim which left the ears tingling. In all of his talk, how- 
ever, there was character, individuality, and greatness. 
Wrong he might often be, weak never. Whatever view 
he expressed, in youth or age, was stated clearly, and 
with strength. Even when sifted through the recollec- 
tions of others, his sayings stand out as incomparably 
finer than those of any talker of that age. Compare the 
few little jests and epigrams of Talleyrand, for instance, 
with the numberless comments of Napoleon on men and 
things, on matters social, political, industrial, financial, 
military, and religious. It is like a comparison between 
a few lamps in a hallway and the myriad stars of the 
firmament. On every topic he discussed he said the best 
things that can be said on that side ; and there is no sub- 
ject connected with human affairs in a state that he has 
not touched. Upon every subject he had a word which 
shot to the core of the matter. His talent for throwing 



392 NAPOLEON chap. 

into one dazzling sentence the pith of a long discussion 
was unexcelled. , Some of the best sayings attributed to 
Talleyrand were really the sayings of Napoleon. It often 
happened that these terse expressions were coarse, the 
language of men on the street. At such sayings the 
" Lady Clara " tribe of men arched their eyebrows in deli- 
cate protest, and said to one another, " This Bonaparte is no 
gentleman ; he was not so well brought up as we were, — 
we, the Talleyrands, Metternichs, and Whitworths ! " 

In one humor. Napoleon was brusque, coarse, overbear- 
ing, and pitiless ; in another he was caressing, elegantly 
dignified, imperially generous and gracious. Between 
these extremes ran the current of his life : hence the 
varied impressions he made upon others. Charles Fox 
and Lord Holland knew him personally, and they risked 
political and social influence in England by defending him 
from the abuse which had become the fashion there. Al- 
most without exception the men who came into personal 
relations with him loved him. The rare exceptions are 
such people as Bourrienne and Remusat, whom Napoleon 
had to rebuke for ways that were crooked. Even to his 
valets he was a hero. 

As Charles Fox said, " The First Consul at Malmaison, 
at St. Cloud, and at the Tuileries are three different men, 
forming together the heau ideal of human greatness." 

To these three Napoleons should be added at least one 
other, — Napoleon at the head of his army. 

In public. Napoleon trained himself to that majestic 
dignity, grace, and thoughtfulness which his imposing 
position required. The Pope did not act his part better 
at the coronation, nor Alexander at Tilsit. He rarely, if 
ever, overacted or underacted a public part, but in pri- 



XXX HABITS AND CHARACTERISTICS 393 

vate there was a difference. In familiar converse he 
would pace up and down the room, or twitch in his 
chair, or throw his feet up on the desk, and open his 
penknife and whittle the chair arm, or sprawl on the 
floor studying his big maps, or sit down in the lap of 
his secretary. 

With the rough good humor of a soldier, he would call 
his intimates " simpleton," " ninny," or even " fool " ; he 
would pinch their ears, and lightly flick them on the 
cheek with his open hand. Wliereupon the oversensitive 
biographers have unanimously shuddered, and exclaimed, 
" See what a vulgar creature this Napoleon was ! " 

In his personal habits he was neat to the point of being 
fastidious. If ever he wasted any time at all, it was the 
hours he spent in the bath. Simple in his dress and 
in his tastes, no gentleman was ever more scrupulously 
clean. Generally he wore the uniform of a colonel of his 
guard ; and his plain gray overcoat, and plain little hals 
with its cheap tricolor cockade, formed a vivid contrast 
to the gaudy dress of foreign diplomats, or of his own 
officers. 

He pretended that anger with him never reached his 
head, that he had his passions under perfect control. 
This was all nonsense. His temper frequently burst all 
bounds, and for the moment he was as insane as other 
men in a passion. Madame Junot states that when he 
fell into one of these fits of anger, he was frightful. 

Upon at least one occasion of this kind he kicked the 
dinner table over, and smashed the crockery ; at another 
he put his foot, in a violent and tumultuous manner, 
against the belly of Senator Volney. 

It was rumored around the palace, on his return from 



394 NAPOLEON chap. 

Spain in 1809, that he gave Talleyrand a " punch on the 
nose" ; and once when the jealous and watchful Jose- 
phine came upon him as he was enjoying himself with 
another woman, he sprang at her in such a fury that she 
fled the room in terror. 

At Moscow while the Emperor was in his blackest 
mood, everything going wrong, and a general crash 
impending, Roustan, kneeling before him to put on his 
boots, carelessly got the left boot on the right foot. The 
next instant he was sprawling on his back on the floor. 
Napoleon had kicked him over. 

It is said that he threatened Berthier once with the 
tongs, and Admiral Bruix with his riding-whip. On the 
road to Moscow he rode furiously into the midst of some 
pillaging soldiers, striking them right and left with his 
whip, and knocking them down with his horse. 

But these occasions were rare. His control of himself 
was almost incredible, and he learned to endure the most 
startling and calamitous events without a word or a 
change of expression. 

If you would see far, far into the heart of Napoleon, 
study his relations with Junot. Not much brain had this 
Junot, not much steadiness of character ; but he was as 
brave as a mad bull, and he had shared his purse with Na- 
poleon in the old days of poverty and gloom. More than 
this, he had believed in Napoleon at a time when Napo- 
leon himself had well-nigh lost heart. So it came to pass 
that Junot was the beloved of the chief, and remained so 
in spite of grievous faults and sins. Junot gambled, and 
Napoleon abhorred gaming ; Junot drank to excess, and 
Napoleon detested drunkards ; Junot was a rowdy, and Na- 
poleon shrank from rowdyism ; Napoleon loved order, and 



XXX HABIJS AND CHARACTERISTICS 395 

Junot was most disorderly ; Napoleon loved a strict rela- 
tion between income and outgo, and Junot was a marvel 
of extravagant prodigality. Napoleon loved success, and 
Junot brought failure upon him where it hurt dreadfully 

— in Portugal, in Russia. Yet through it all Napoleon 
never flagged in his indulgence to Junot. He made the 
hot-headed grenadier Governor of Paris, Duke of Abrantes, 
lapping him in honors and wealth. Sometimes Junot would 
be angry at his chief, and Napoleon would coax him back 
to good humor, as a father would a child. Sometimes 
Junot would run to Napoleon with his griefs ; and the 
busiest man in the world would drop everything, take his 
suffering friend by the arm, walk him up and down some 
quiet room or corridor, soothing him with soft words, with 
caresses. One day when Junot had taken to his bed, be- 
cause of a fancied slight at the palace. Napoleon, hearing 
of it, slipped away from the Tuileries, went to the bedside 
of his old comrade, comforted him, reassured him, and 
stood by him until he was himself again. 

When Madame Junot is in the throes of child-birth, it 
is to Napoleon that the distracted husband flies. At the 
Tuileries he is soothed by Napoleon himself, who sends off 
messengers to inquire after the wife ; and when the ordeal 
is safely over, it is Napoleon who congratulates the now 
radiant Junot, finds his hat for him, and sends him off 
home to the mother and babe. 

At last there did come something like a rupture be- 
tween these two — and why? Junot had brought scan- 
dal on Napoleon's sister while the brother was off with 
his army in Germany. " To bring shame upon my sister 

— you, Junot! " and the great Emperor fell into a chair, 
overcome with grief. 



396 NAPOLEON chai-. 

In his relations with Duroc, Berthier, Lannes, La Salle, 
Rapp, Meneval, Eugene Beauharnais, we find the same traits. 
The indulgence with which he treated those he liked, the 
pains he took to keep them in good humor, his care not to 
wound their feelings, and his caressing way of coaxing 
them out of their occasional sulks, shows a phase of Napo- 
leon's own character which is usually overlooked. 

He had many boyish ways which never left him. He 
would hum a song and whistle a tune to the last. Dur- 
ing moments of abstraction he fell to whittling his desk or 
chair, sat upon a table and swung his leg back and forth, 
or softly whistled or hummed some favorite air. During 
the great disaster at Leipsic, when all had been done and 
all had failed, Napoleon, in a kind of daze, stood in the 
street and whistled " Malbrook has gone to the wars." 

He was fond of playing pranks. He tried to drive a 
four-in-hand at Malmaison, struck a gate-post, and got 
thrown headlong to the ground, narrowly escaping fatal 
injuries to himself and Josephine. He would disguise 
himself, and go about Paris to hear the people talk, com- 
ing back delighted if he had provoked angry rebuke by 
some criticism of his on Napoleon. He would throw off 
his coat at Malmaison, and romp and play like a school- 
boy. After dinner, if the weather was fine, he would call 
out, " Let's play barriers ! " and off would go his coat, and 
in a moment he would be racing about the grounds. 

One afternoon while amusing himself in this way, two 
rough-looking men were seen near the gate, loitering 
and gazing at the romping group. The ladies saw fit 
to become frightened, and to make the usual hysterical 
outcry. Gallant young officers sprung forward to drive 
off the intruders, as gallant 5'^oung officers should. But 



XXX HABITS AND CHARACTERISTICS 397 

it turned out that one of the men was a maimed veteran 
of the wars, come with his brother, in the hope of catch- 
ing a glimpse of the beloved form of his general — Napo- 
leon. Having seen, having heard, the First Consul put 
his arm around Josephine, drew her toward the two men, 
gave them gracious welcome, introduced them to his wife, 
and sent them under Eugene's escort to the house to 
drink his health in a glass of wine. So promptly was 
the thing done, so naturally, so warmly, sb tactfully, that 
the one-armed soldier was melted to tears. 

In his rude horse-play. Napoleon taught his gazelle to 
chase the ladies of the court, and when the animal caught 
and tore a dress, or caught and pinched a leg, his delight 
was precisely that of the mischievous, slightly malicious 
boy. In playing barriers he cheated, as he did at all 
games, and violated all the rules. When he was unbent, 
when he was at Malmaison, he could take a joke as well 
as any. One very rough piece of horse-play he took a 
good deal more placidly than many a private citizen 
would have done. Passing through a gallery at Malmai- 
son, he stopped to examine some engravings which were 
lying upon a table. Young Isabey happening to come 
into the gallery behind Napoleon, and seeing the back 
of the stooping figure, took it to be Eugene Beauharnais. 
Slipping up softly, Isabey gave a jump, and leaped upon 
Napoleon's shoulders, astraddle of his neck. Napoleon 
recovered from the shock, threw Isabey to the ground, 
asking, "What does this mean? " 

" I thought it was Eugene," cried Isabey. 

" Well, suppose it was Eugene — must you needs break 
his shoulder bones?" Without further rebuke Napoleon 
walked out of the gallery. Through the folly of Isabey, 



398 NAPOLEON chap. 

the secret leaked out, and there was just enough of the 
ludicious about it to embarrass both the actors, and Isabey 
went to play leap-frog elsewhere. 

Napoleon was fond of children, knew how to talk to 
them, play with them, and win their confidence. The man 
never lived who knew better than he the route to the 
heart of a soldier, a peasant, or an ambitious boy. With 
these he could ever use exactly the right word, look, smile, 
and deed. He' was familiar with his friends, joked them, 
put his arms around them, and walked with them leaning 
upon them : he never joked with men like Fouche, Talley- 
rand, Bernadotte, Moreau, and St. Cyr. These men he 
used, but understood and disliked. 

Fat women he could not endure, and a pregnant woman 
showing herself when she should have been in seclusion, 
excited his disgust. One of the pictures he most liked 
to gaze upon was that of a tall, slender woman, robed in 
white, and walking beneath the shade of noble trees. 

A fastidious, exacting busybody, he was forever on the 
lookout for violations of good taste on the part of the 
ladies of his court. He detested the low dresses which 
exposed the bosom to the vulgar gaze ; and if he saw 
some one dressed in peculiarly unbecoming style, he was 
rude enough to give words to his irritation. " Dear me ! 
are you never going to change that gown ? " This was 
very, very impolite, but the costume was one which he 
abhorred, and the wearer had inflicted it upon him " more 
than twenty times." 

Possibly if there were a greater number of outspoken 
Napoleons, there would be fewer absurdities in fashionable 
female attire. 

To some of Napoleon's sharp sayings, the haughty 



XXX HABITS AND CHARACTERISTICS 399 

dames and damsels of the old aristocracy made some 
crushing replies — according to their Memoirs. It is 
fairly safe to say that these crushing retorts were made 
in the seclusion of the homes of the fair retorters. The 
man whose stern look and bitter tongue awed into em- 
barrassed silence such a veteran in word-play as Madame 
de Stael, was not likely to be crushed by such pert and 
shallow beings as Madame de Chevreuse and her kind. 

For facts, events, his memory was prodigious ; for 
names and dates, it was not good. Sometimes he would 
ask the same man about court three or four different times 
what his name was. In his later years his memory be- 
came very fickle, and he was known to forget having 
given the most important orders. He could not remem- 
ber a charge he ordered Segur to make in Spain ; nor 
could he recall that he had ordered the charge of the 
heavy cavalry at Waterloo. 

Noted at school for his skill in mathematics, and using 
that science constantly in his military operations, it is 
said that he could rarely add up a column of figures 
V correctly. 

He could not spell, nor could he write grammatically; 
and he took no pains to learn. A busy man, according 
to his idea, had no time to waste on such matters. 
. He loved music, especially Italian music ; was fond of 
' poetry of the higher sort, and appreciated painting, sculp- 
ture, and architecture. He loved the beauty and quietude 
of such country places as Malmaison, never wearied of add- 
ing to their attractions, and was happy when free from 
business, and taking a solitary stroll along garden walks 
amid flowers and under the shade of trees. 

In his work. Napoleon was all system. No clerk 



400 NAPOLEON char 

could keep papers in better order. No head of a depart- 
ment could turn off business with such regularity and 
despatch. He knew all about his army, down to the 
last cannon -; knew just what his forces numbered, where 
they were, and what their condition. He was master of 
the state finances, of every branch of the internal admin- 
istration, of every detail of foreign affairs. He kept up 
with everything, systematized everything, took the ini- 
tiative in everything. An extra plate of soup could not 
be served in the palace without a written order from 
Duroc, the proper officer. An army contractor could 
not render a false account without being exposed and 
punished. An overcharge could not be made in the 
palace furnishings without his finding it out. " He is a 
devil," said many a quaking Beugnot. 

One day, says Constant, the pontoon men were march- 
ing with about forty wagons. The Emperor came along, 
and cried, " Halt ! " 

Pointing to one of the wagons, Napoleon asked of the 
officer in charge : — 

" What is in that ? " 

The officer answered, " Some bolts, nails, ropes, hatch- 
ets, saws — " 

" How many of all that ? " 

The officer gave the number. 

" Empty the wagon and let me see ! " 

The order was obeyed, bolts, nails, ropes, saws, every- 
thing taken out and counted. But the Emperor was not 
satisfied. He got off his horse, climbed into the wagon 
over the spoke to see that it had been emptied. 

The troops shouted: "Bravo! That's right ! That is 
the way to find out ! " 



XXX HABITS AND CHAEACTEEISTICS 401 

He compared his mind to a chest of drawers, where each 
subject occupied its separate space. In turn he opened 
each drawer. No one subject ever got mixed with another. 
When all the drawers were shut, he fell asleep. Of course 
this was not literally true, but during his best years it 
came as near being literally true as is possible to the 
human brain. 

After the day's work was done, he would enter into 
the amusements of his domestic circle, would play and 
dance with the young people, would read or listen to 
music, or would entertain the circle by telling some 
romantic story which he composed as he talked. In the 
evening he loved to have the room darkened while he 
threw the ladies into a gentle state of terror with a ghost- 
story. 

Napoleon's penetration in some directions was wonder- 
fully keen ; in others remarkably dull. For instance, it 
was almost impossible to deceive him in matters of account, 
the number of men in a mass, or the plan of battle of a 
foe. He would converse with an engineer in reference 
to a bridge he had been sent to build and which Napo- 
leon supposed he had built ; after a few words he would 
turn away and say to the prefect, " That man did not 
build the bridge — who did it ? " The truth would 
come out : an obscure genius had planned the work, 
and Napoleon would say to this genius, obscure no more, 
" Come up higher." 

He could scan a list of political prisoners, pounce upon 
the name of a surgeon, decide at a flash that this man 
could not be a fanatic. "Bring him to trial, order him 
to be shot, and he will confess." And it so happened. 

But it is marvellous that Napoleon, who revolutionized 

2i> 



402 NAPOLEON chap. 

the strategy of war, improved nothing, invented noth- 
ing, in the instruments of warfare. A Prussian offered 
to him the original of the needle-gun, and he totally- 
failed to grasp the terrible effectiveness of the weapon. 
True, he experimented with it, ordering that specimens 
should be made and shown him. But when his armories 
turned out clumsy models, as at first they were almost 
sure to do, he seemingly lost interest. The Prussian 
carried his invention to Germany ; and the Austrians 
and French of a later day melted like snow before this 
new and fearful gun. 

When Fulton came to France with his steam-boat dis- 
covery, offering a means by which Napoleon might have 
destroyed with ease England's all-powerful navy, his 
invention was not appreciated. True, Napoleon gave 
him encouragement and money, and urged the wise men 
of the Institute to look into the thing ; but Napoleon him- 
self did not " take hold." When the sages of the Insti- 
tute reported adversely to the new invention, as sages 
almost always do, Napoleon let the subject drop, appar- 
ently forgetting that it is usually the ignorant " crank " 
and the untutored " tenderfoot " who stumbles upon 
great inventions and the richest mines. So far-sighted 
in some directions, it seems unaccountable that he did 
not realize immediately the vast importance of the 
breech-loading gun, and the steam-propelled vessel. 
With the same muzzle-loading muskets he fought the 
first battle and the last. The same little cannon which 
could not batter down the old walls of Acre, sent balls 
which rebounded from the farmyard enclosures at 
Waterloo. 

During all of his campaigns prior to 1812, Napoleon 



XXX HABITS AND CHAEACTERISTICS 403 

gave personal attention to everything ; no detail was 
neglected. He saw with his own eyes, taking nothing 
for granted, nothing on trust. As far as possible he 
followed up his orders, seeing to it that they were 
executed. Thus on the night before Jena he risked his 
life and came near being shot reconnoitring the Prussian 
position, and after he had selected positions for his 
batteries, and marked out the path up which the guns 
were to be drawn to the heights, he could not rest 
until he had gone in person and seen how his orders were 
being executed. It was fortunate that he did so. The 
foremost cannon carriage had got jammed between the 
rocks of the passage and had blocked the way of all the 
others. The whole battery was at a halt, and nothing 
being done to forward the guns. Angry as he was. Napo- 
leon at once took command, ordered up the sappers, held 
a lantern while they were at work, and showed them how 
to widen the road. Not until the first gun had passed 
through did he leave the place. The failure to look after 
such things was one cause of the disasters of his later 
years. 

He spared himself no fatigue in war. Sensitive to 
cold, to evil smells, to ugly scenes, to physical discomfort 
of all sorts, the Sybarite of the palace became the Spartan 
on the campaign. He could stand as much cold, or heat, 
or hunger, or thirst, camp hardships and camp nastiness 
as any private. He could stay in the saddle day and 
night, could march on foot by the hour in snow or mud, 
could stand the storms of rain, sleet, and wind, made no 
complaint of filthy beds and disgusting surroundings, and 
could eat a soldier's bread out of the knapsack with all 
of a soldier's relish. 



404 NAPOLEON chap. 

In later years he carried his habits of luxury to the 
army, and with them came defeats. The general who 
in Italy could have taken all his baggage in a cart was 
followed in 1812 by a train of seventy wagons. He went 
to war then like Louis XIV., and the luck of Louis XIV. 
overtook him. 

On the field of battle his aspect was one of perfect 
composure. No turn of the tide broke through his abso- 
lute self-control. 

At Marengo, when the great plain was covered with the 
flying fragments of his army, and fugitives were crying : 
" All is lost ! Save himself who can ! " he was as calm 
as at a review. Berthier galloping up with more bad 
news, Napoleon rebuked him with, " You do not tell me 
that with sufficient coolness." When Desaix arrived. 
Napoleon took all the time that was necessary to make 
proper dispositions for the attack, exhibiting not the 
slightest nervousness under the galling Austrian fire. 

In the retreat from Russia he was stoically serene, save 
on the rarest occasions. Only a few intimates knew how 
much, in private, he gave way to his immense burden of 
care, of grief, of impotent rage. To the army he appeared 
as cold, as hard, as unyielding as granite. When a 
general brought him some unusually appalling news. 
Napoleon turned away as though he did not wish to hear. 
The officer persisted; Napoleon asked, " Why do you wish 
to disturb my equanimity ? " 

If his fatigues had been excessive in the preparation 
for battle, and his dispositions had been made, and all 
was going as he had foreseen, he could slumber restfully 
while the combat raged. Thus at Jena, Segur speaks of 
Napoleon asleep on the ground where his great map was 



XXX HABITS AND CHARACTERISTICS 405 

unrolled — asleep with the grenadiers standing in hollow 
square about him. 

Lord Brougham writes : " Lying under some cover in 
fire, he would remain for an hour or two, receiving reports 
and issuing his orders, sometimes with a plan before him, 
sometimes with the face of the ground in his mind only. 

" There he is with his watch in one hand, while the 
other moves constantly from his pocket, where his snuff- 
box, or rather his snuff, lies. An aide-de-camp arrives ; 
tells of a movement ; answers shortly, some questions 
rapidly, perhaps impatiently, put ; is despatched with the 
order that is to solve the difficulty of some general of 
division. Another is ordered to attend, and sent off with 
directions to make some distant corps support an operation. 
The watch is again consulted ; more impatient symp- 
toms ; the name of one aide-de-camp is constantly pro- 
nounced ; question after question is put whether any one 
is coming from a certain quarter ; an event is expected ; 
it ought to have happened ; at length the wished-for 
messenger arrives. ' Well ! what has been done yon- 
der?' — ' The height is gained ; the Marshal is there.' — 
'Let him stand firm — not to move a step.' Another 
aide-de-camp is ordered to bring up the guard. 

" ' Let the Marshal march upon the steeple, defiling by 
his left — and all on his right are his prisoners.' Now 
the watch is consulted and the snuff is taken no more ; 
the great captain indulges in pleasantry ; nor doubts any 
more of the certainty and of the extent of his victory 
than if he had already seen its details in the bulletin." 

Cruelty and kindness, selfishness and generosity, loyalty 
and treachery, honesty and perfidy, are almost unmean- 
ing terms if applied without qualification to Napoleon. 



^ 



406 NAPOLEON chaf 

Where his plans were not involved, he frequently mani- 
fested the human virtues in their highest form ; where 
those plans were involved, he practised all the vices with- 
out scruple or pity. Naturally he was humane, charitable, 
kind, indulgent, sympathetic, generous ; if policy required 
it, he became as hard as steel. He left no debt of gratitude 
unpaid ; ignored none of the claims, however slight, of 
kindred and old association. See how he behaves toward 
Madame Permon, how tolerant he is of that intolerable 
woman, how he forgets her snubs, how he forgives her a 
public insult, how he follows her with respectful con- 
sideration all the days of her life — and why ? She had 
been kind to him when he was a poor boy, had nursed 
his father on the death-bed. " It is a devil of a temper, 
but a noble heart ; " and the noble heart makes him for- 
get the devil of a temper. 

He gave place and pension to early sweetheart, to boy- 
hood friends, to schoolmates, to teachers. The son and 
daughter of General Marbeuf found him delighted to 
serve them in remembrance of their father. The widow 
of the Duke of Orleans who had chanced to be the giver of 
a prize to him at Brienne, and who had forgotten all about 
it, was happily surprised to find that he had remembered. 
He restored her confiscated pension, and gave a relative 
of hers a place in the Senate. To the daughter of Madame 
de Brienne he proved himself a vigilant guardian. So the 
record runs throughout his life, and his last will is little 
more than a monument of gratitude to those who had at 
any time done him a service. 

He was not free from superstition. What people called 
" omens " made an impression upon him. He sometimes 
made the sign of the cross, as though to ward off impend- 



XXX HABITS AND CHAKACTERISTICS 407 

ing evil. When in Italy the glass over Josephine's 
portrait was broken, Marmont says that he turned fright- 
fully pale, and exclaimed that his vrife was either dead or 
unfaithful. 

He was a man of insatiable curiosity. He wished to 
know everything, and to have a hand in everything. His 
police infested every nook and corner, and over his police 
he set spies, and over the spies he set the informer. Thus 
he had two or three systems going at the same time. He 
not only sought to know all about public affairs, but pri- 
vate matters also. He delighted in gossip and scandal, 
hugely enjoying his ability to twit some man or some 
woman with an amour which he had discovered. Theatre 
talk, street talk, drawing-room talk, were reported to him 
regularly. Copying the Bourbon example, he opened pri- 
vate letters to ascertain what correspondents were saying 
to each other. He allowed no freedom of the press, and 
no real freedom of speech. Journals which showed the 
least independence he suppressed. Authors, actors, ora- 
tors, who ventured upon forbidden ground, felt the curb 
at once. 

Lavish as he was in expenditures, there was method and 
economy throughout. He was good at a bargain, exacted 
the worth of his money, would tolerate no imposition or 
overcharge. His imperial displays were more magnificent 
than those of the Grand Monarch, but they cost him less 
than one-tenth as much. 

It is not possible to dogmatize about a man like Napo- 
leon, saying positively just what he was. A more contra- 
dictory mortal never lived. 

The man who massacred the prisoners at Jaffa was the 
same who perhaps lost his crown because he would not 



408 NAPOLEON chap. 

consent to excite civil war in Russia or in France. He 
who had just sent tens of thousands to death at Borodino, 
angrily reproved a careless member of his staff for allow- 
ing the hoof of his horse to strike one of the wounded, 
causing a cry of pain. 

" It was only a Russian," said the negligent rider. 

" Russian or French, it's all the same," cried Napoleon, 
furiously ; " I want them all cared for." 

His temper was despotic; he could not brook opposi- 
tion, nor tolerate independence. Hence he banished 
Madame de Stael, suppressed the tribunate which had 
the power of debate, and frowned upon voluntary move- 
ments of all kinds, whether clubs or schools. His 
treatment of Toussaint was atrocious, filling the honest 
biographer with anger, disgust, and shame : but, after all, 
Toussaint was a rebel, and the way of the rebel is hard. 
In his own eyes the insurgent, striving for national inde- 
pendence, is a hero : in the eyes of the world he is an 
incendiary, unless he whips his master and becomes free. 

From the grave of Robert Emmett, Ireland can speak 
of England's treatment of rebels : from Cuba comes a 
voice choked with blood, which vainly tries to do justice 
to Spain's treatment of the rebel ; and from Siberia, 
Hungary, Poland, Finland, Hindustan, Crete, Italy, South 
Africa, come awful reminders of the well-known fact, — ■ 
the way of the rebel is hard. Toussaint L'Ouverture, 
regarded as a rebel, was cast into prison: Jefferson 
Davis, regarded as a rebel, was cast into prison : Davis, 
the white man, was put in irons and came near dying : 
Toussaint, the black man, was ironed, and died. In each 
case the motive was the same, — to degrade and to punish 
an alleged rebel. 



XXX HABITS AND CHAEACTERISTICS 409 

Great has been the outcry made by the literary Scribes 
and Pharisees against Napoleon because of his cruelty to 
the hero of St. Domingo and to Andreas Hofer, the hero 
of the Tyrol ; until these indignant people indict also the 
kings and cabinets who have slain their hundreds where 
Napoleon slew his dozens, we cannot feel much sympathy 
for the prosecution. 

Relentlessly selfish in the pursuit of power, it will be 
admitted by those who impartially study his career that 
he used his power, not for personal and selfish pleasures, 
but for the future welfare of the peoples over whose 
destinies he presided. The laborious manner in which 
he worked out the revolutionary principle of lifting the 
despised Jew into full citizenship, will always be a strik- 
ing illustration of the liberality of his statesmanship. 

He loved to tour the country, to see with his own eyes, 
to hear with his own ears. He loved to meet the people 
face to face, to talk with them familiarly, to get at the 
real facts about everything. The man never lived who 
had such a passion for making things better. Harbors 
must be widened, deepened, made more secure. Trade 
routes must be improved, rivers linked to rivers, or rivers 
connected with seas. Mountains must be conquered by 
broad, easy-grade roads; and villages must be planted 
along the route for the convenience of the traveller. 
He tore out old buildings to make way for new ones, 
— larger, better, grander. Crooked streets — narrow, 
nasty, the homes of squalor, of crime, and of pesti- 
lence — he replaced by broad avenues and handsome 
buildings. Churches, schools, town-halls, arsenals, dock- 
yards, canals, highways, bridges, fortifications, manufac- 
tories, harbor works, new industries, sprang up at his 



410 NAPOLEON chap. 

touch throughout the realms he ruled. Had he never 
been known as a warrior, his work as administrator and 
as a legislator would have made his name immortal. Had 
he never been heard of as a legislator, his work in Europe 
as a developer of material resources would have made it 
impossible for the world to forget him. The manufacto- 
ries which he encouraged were but the beginnings of a 
mighty evolution which would have transferred to the 
Continent the vast profits England had so long reaped. 
At every seaport, on every canal, on all the highways, 
in every town from Venice to Brest and Cherbourg, 
the traveller of the present day sees the footprints of 
Napoleon the Great. 

He rid Paris of the periodical nuisance of the Seine 
overflow, and along the river ran his magnificent embank- 
ments. At St. Helena he expressed a wonder that the 
Thames had never been thus controlled, and England 
afterward embanked her river as the great Emperor 
suggested. 

His natural instinct was to make improvements. The 
first thing he did in Spain was to establish free-trade 
between her provinces, abolish feudal burdens, suppress 
one-third of the monasteries where " those lazy beasts of 
monks " lived in idleness at public expense, and to give 
the people the right to be heard in fixing taxes and 
making laws. The first thing the Bourbons did, on 
their return, was to restore all the abuses Napoleon had 
abolished. 

In 'Italy, the first thing he did, after overturning the 
temporal power of the Pope, was to suppress the papal 
monopolies by which the Albani family had the sole 
right to manufacture pins, Andrea Novelli the exclusive 



XXX HABITS AND CHAEACTERISTICS 411 

privilege of selling oil for lamps, Alexandro Betti the 
monopoly of ferry boats, and so forth. To these be- 
nighted Romans he gave the Code Napoleon, trial by 
jury, home rule in local affairs, equality before the law, 
and relief from all feudal abuses. 

The first thing the Pope did when in 1814 he was re- 
stored to temporal power was to abolish all things Na- 
poleonic, and to reestablish the hateful monopolies, feudal 
burdens, and papal customs. 

In Egypt he projected the mighty work of adding mill- 
ions of acres to the cultivable area by the construction 
of vast storage basins on the Nile. England has but 
recently carried to successful completion the magnificent 
plan he suggested. 

In Milan he finished the gorgeous cathedral which had 
been commenced hundreds of years before. To stagnant, 
pestilential Venice he gave new life, dredging her lagoons, 
decreeing a Grand Canal, deepening her harbor, overhaul- 
ing her sanitary system — spending $1,000,000 during 
his one visit. And the story is the same for almost every 
portion of his huge empire. 

Bad? Lord Wolseley says he was not only bad, but 
" superlatively " so. Perhaps he was ; but here is one 
publican and sinner who dares to say that were the good 
men to work half as hard as Napoleon did to improve 
the condition of this world, its moral and material situa- 
tion would more nearly approximate the imagined perfec- 
tion of that heavenly abode in whose behalf this poor 
planet and its poor humanity are so often neglected. 



CHAPTER XXXI 

rpiLSIT is generally considered the high-water mark of 
Napoleon's power. Not yet forty years of age, he was 
lord of lords and king of kings. With Russia for an ally, 
Continental Europe was at his mercy. Adding West- 
phalia and, also, enlarged Saxony to the Confederation 
of the Rhine, the Empire was guarded upon the west, from 
the North Sea to the Mediterranean, by an unbroken line 
of feudatory states. In all these subject lands the prin- 
ciples of the French Revolution took the form of law. 
The Code Napoleon, with its civil equality, jury trials, 
uniformity of taxes, publicity of legal proceedings, drove 
out the mediaeval abuses which had so long robbed the 
people in the name of government. To his brother Je- 
rome Napoleon wrote : " Be a constitutional king. Your 
people ought to enjoy a liberty, an equality, a well-being 
unknown heretofore to the Germans." And the Emperor 
reminded Jerome that if he gave his people the benefits of 
a wise and liberal administration, they would never wish 
to return to the barbarous rule of Prussia. Rule your 
kingdom wisely and liberally, said Napoleon, and "this 
kind of government will protect it more powerfully than 
fortresses or the armies of France." 

Far-reaching as was the sweep of Napoleon's sword, 
that of his Code went farther. The soldier of the Revo- 
lution could never go as far as its principles. In the hour 

412 



CHAP. XXXI HIGH-WATER MARK 413 

of its deepest humiliation Prussia dropped the system of 
Frederick, a worn-out garment, and clad itself anew. She 
freed the serf, abolished caste, opened all careers to merit, 
made military service universal, and gave partial self- 
government to towns and cities. Under the ministry of 
Stein, Prussia was born again, and the greatness of modern 
Germany dates from the reorganization which followed 
Jena — a greatness which, when analyzed, is seen to con- 
sist in calling in the Prussian people to resurrect a nation 
which class legislation and the privileged nobles had led 
to perdition. 

In measuring the results of the French Revolution and 
of Napoleon's victories, let us remember what Germany 
was in the eighteenth century. Let us not forget that 
the great mass of the people were serfs chained to the 
soil, mere implements of husbandry, burdened with the 
duty of feeding the nation in time of peace, and fighting 
for it in time of war, but uncheered by the hope of ever 
becoming more than serfs. Let us remember that the 
great rights of the citizen had no legal existence, that 
the arbitrary will of the lord was the peasant's law. In 
the very provinces out of which Napoleon fashioned the 
kingdom of Westphalia a legitimate, divine-right prince 
had sold to an equally God-appointed king of Great Britain 
some thousands of soldiers to fight against the revolted 
colonists in North America. In the very cities which the 
Code Napoleon now entered and ruled, might still be seen 
the foul dungeons where alleged culprits were secretly 
tried, secretly tortured, and secretly done to death with 
atrocities which might have shamed a savage. 

With Napoleon himself, however, imperialism had be- 
come a fixed creed. Ever since Austerlitz, he had affected 



414 NAPOLEON chap. 

greater reserve, exacted a greater deference, obeyed and 
enforced a more rigid etiquette. Oriental baseness of flat- 
tery pampered his pride ; opposition to his will was not 
dreamt of in his empire ; pestiferous intriguers like 
Madame de Stael lived in exile ; pert maids of honor like 
Mademoiselle de Chevreuse were sent away and silenced ; 
secret enemies, embryo traitors like Talleyrand and Berna- 
dotte, fawned and flattered like the others, greedily clutch- 
ing at all he flung to them, — money, titles, estates. The 
Grand Monarch himself never lived in greater pomp than 
this " Corsican upstart." The formulas of divine right 
usurped the old popular phrases, and "Napoleon by the 
grace of God Emperor, etc.," was the style of imperial 
proclamations. " Religious veneration " was claimed for 
the eagles of the army ; and the priests taught the chil- 
dren that "to honor and serve the Emperor is to honor 
and serve God." No toil was spared to make the cere- 
monial at the palace conform to Bourbon precedent. The 
hero of Austerlitz and Jena consented to be tutored by 
the Campans, De Segurs, Narbonnes, and De Brezds of 
etiquette. When Louis XVIII. came to the throne in 
1814, he apparently discovered but one serious fault in all 
of Napoleon's imitation Bourbonism — his dinner had not 
been escorted from kitchen to dining room by a squad of 
soldiers. 



Turkey had not nursed any very* great degree of wrath 
against Napoleon, on account of his attempt upon Egypt; 
she had recognized his greatness and had become his ally. 
During the campaign in Poland, while Napoleon's army 
was weltering in the mud, which caused indignant French 



xsxi HIGH-WATER MARK 415 

soldiers to exclaim, " Is this what the Poles have the im- 
pudence to call their country? " England had sent a fleet to 
Constantinople to bully the Sultan into joining the league 
against France. 

The terror of the unprepared Turk was profound, and 
he was about to submit; but it so happened that Napoleon 
was represented there by a man of courage and ability — 
General Sebastiani, Through his advice, and inspired by 
his confidence, the Sultan parleyed with the English, tem- 
porized, gained time, manned defences, and prepared for a 
struggle. A letter from Napoleon came at the right mo- 
ment, exhorting and promising, as no one but Napoleon 
could exhort and promise. French diplomats steadied the 
nerves of the Commander of the Faithful, while French 
officers directed the work on the fortresses, so that when 
the English admiral was finally told that Turkey would 
resist his insolent demands, the Turks were all ready for 
battle, and the English were not. They had forced their 
way into Turkish waters, killing and wounding as they 
came ; they now sailed away, pursued and bombarded, los- 
ing many in killed and wounded as they escaped. 

Failing here, they determined to make sure of Denmark. 
By the Treaty of Tilsit the two Emperors contemplated a 
union of all the Continental powers against English com- 
merce. Great Britain believed that Denmark would be 
forced to enter this league — but she had no proofs, so far 
as historians know. At any rate, no hostile steps had been 
taken by either Emperor : Napoleon had merely instructed 
Talleyrand to enter into negotiations with Denmark. Upon 
the plea that Napoleon meant to seize the Danish fleet. Great 
Britain determined to take charge of it herself, despite the 
fact that Denmark was at peace with her, had given no 



416 NAPOLEON chap. 

cause for war, and was even then represented at London 
by a resident, friendly minister. Concealing her purpose, 
smiling upon this duped minister to the last. Great Brit- 
ain launched fleet and army against an unsuspecting 
people. Appearing before Copenhagen in force, the Brit- 
ish demanded that the Danish fleet be given up to Eng- 
land in pledge, " until the peace." 

Taken at disadvantage though they were, the Danes 
could not at once yield to so shameful a humiliation, and 
the English opened fire. For three days and nights the 
devoted city was shelled, and all the horrors of war in- 
flicted upon it. For three days the British guns roared, 
strewing the streets with dead men, dead women, dead 
children ; while eight hundred homes were in ruins or on 
fire. Then the Danes yielded, their city was looted, their 
ships taken away, and the exulting marauders sailed back 
to England towing their prizes, to be welcomed with rap- 
turous enthusiasm. 



To the Berlin Decree of Napoleon, Great Britain re- 
torted with another " Order in Council." She declared 
that she would search all merchant vessels, and that 
neutrals should not be allowed to trade unless they had 
touched at a British port and paid duties there. Here was 
another violation of all law, — an insolent invasion of the 
right of neutrals to do business, save in contraband of 
war. Napoleon's counter shot was the Milan Decree, in 
which he very naturally declared that any ship submit- 
ting to such demands as England had made, should be 
treated as an English ship. Why not? It is apparent 
enough, that if neutral ships did business under English 



XXXI HIGH-WATER MARK 417 

rules, paying duties at English ports, such ships were 
practically doing business as English ships. 

Strange are the verdicts of history. Napoleon gets 
almost all the blame for this commercial war, in which 
he was first struck by England, and in which each of 
his decrees was but an attempt to ward off the blows 
England aimed at him. 

To make a success of his Continental system, it was 
necessary that the entire seacoast of the Continent should 
be closed to English goods. In theory, the system was in 
force throughout the Continent, with the important ex- 
ceptions of Spain and Portugal. To close the long line of 
seaboard these countries presented, was Napoleon's first 
purpose in meddling with their affairs. 

Spain had been his ally, but had, perhaps, never had 
her heart in the alliance. At all events, when the great 
Bourbon conspiracy against Napoleon's life was on foot, 
in 1803, some of the accomplices of Georges had entered 
France under the protection of Spanish passports. Never- 
theless, Spain had paid rich subsidies into Napoleon's 
coffers, and had sent her ships to be destroyed by 
Nelson at Trafalgar. So burdensome had become the 
alliance that Spain had grown tired of it. While Napo- 
leon was involved with Prussia, and previous to Jena, 
the Spaniards had been called to arms by Godoy, the 
Prince of The Peace, real ruler of the kingdom. Na- 
poleon believed that this call to arms was a measure of 
hostility to the French. The victory of Jena, however, 
changed the situation, and Godoy humbly came to terms 
with the winner. 

Now again, in 1808, a treaty was made between France 
and Spain. Portugal, virtually an English colony, and 

2s 



418 NAPOLEON chap. 

ruled from London, was to be conquered, and divided 
between France and Spain. A French army, under Junot, 
marched through Spain into Portugal, and captured Lis- 
bon (November, 1807). The royal house of Braganza 
made its escape to Brazil. Its throne was declared vacant 
by Napoleon, and the French took full possession of the 
country. But for Junot's rashness and rapacity, it seems 
that the Portuguese, as a general thing, would have been 
quite contented with the change of masters. 

In Spain itself fateful events were on foot. The 
old king, Charles IV. was a Bourbon, densely igno- 
rant, extremely religious, and devoid of any real character. 
His queen was a woman of some ability and force of char- 
acter, but she had become infatuated with a common sol- 
dier, Manuel Godoy, and both she and her husband were 
governed by the favorite. 

The heir to the throne, Ferdinand, prince of the Astu- 
rias, was a young man of obstinate temper, full of duplic- 
ity and cruelty. He was loved by the Spanish people, 
partly because he was their handsome young prince-royal, 
and partly because it was known that he hated Godoy. 

The old king was made to believe that his son meant to 
have him assassinated. He appealed to Napoleon for pro- 
tection against Ferdinand. At the same time this prince 
requested of Napoleon the hand of a Bonaparte princess 
in marriage. Thus both factions looked to France, and 
the French Emperor used each against the other. 

The Spaniards rose against Godoy, a mob wrecked his 
palace, and he fled for his life, hiding himself in a roll 
of matting in a loft. Forced out by hunger, he was seen, 
captured, and about to be torn to pieces when he was 
rescued by the guards of Ferdinand, and taken, amid 



«xxi HIGH- WATER MARK 419 

blows and curses, to the barracks. The terrified old king 
abdicated in favor of his son ; and on March 20, 1808, 
Ferdinand entered Madrid in triumph, to the frantic 
delight of the people. 

French armies had already been massed in Spain, and 
some of the strongest fortresses seized by unscrupulous 
trickery. Murat was in chief command, and he marched 
upon the Spanish capital in overwhelming numbers — 
unresisted because the French were believed to be coming* 
as friends of Ferdinand. 

The old king, Charles IV., protested to Napoleon that 
his abdication had been made under duress; he prayed 
for help against his son. To Napoleon applied Ferdi- 
nand, also ; for Murat held Madrid with forty thousand 
troops, and he had not yet recognized the title of the 
new king. 

In April, 1808, the Emperor himself came to Bayonne, 
moving soon into the chateau of Marrac, which was sur- 
rounded by a lovely park " on the banks of the silver 
Nive." The place is now a ruin, the house having been 
gutted by fire in 1825, and the park being now used for 
the artillery of the garrison. But when Napoleon came 
there in 1808, soon to be joined by Josephine and the 
court, it was a place of beauty. Biarritz, the fashionable 
watering-place of to-day, was then unknown ; but along 
the same shore where summer visitors now stroll, Napoleon 
romped with Josephine, "chasing her along the sands, 
and pushing her into the sea at the edge of the tide, 
until she was up to her knees in water." They bathed 
and played together, "and the great Emperor, England's 
' Corsican Ogre,' used to hide her satin shoes on the 
sands while she was in the water, and not allow us to 



420 NAPOLEON chap. 

bring them to her, but made her walk from the beach 
to the carriage barefooted, which gave him immense 
delight." 

All was very gay at the chateau of Marrac, everything 
free, easy, joyous, etiquette somewhat shelved. For in- 
stance, it is related that Josephine's harpsichord needed 
tuning, that a man was called in to tune it, that Jose- 
phine, who was unknown to the tuner, leaned her arms on 
the harpsichord, chatting very familiarly with the tuner, 
that her dress was so plain (and perhaps slovenly) that 
the amorous tuner took her to be a lady's-maid, accessi- 
ble to kisses, that he assured her she was much prettier 
than the Empress, and that he was just about to kiss her, 
when the door opened and in walked the Emperor ! Jose- 
phine laughed. Napoleon laughed, the tuner fled, — leaving 
his tools, — deaf to Napoleon's call for him to come back. 

Equally true, perhaps, is another story of the same date. 
There was a ball at the chateau of Marrac, the windows 
were open, the night being warm. At a pause in the 
music, a lady stepped out upon the balcony, seen by the 
sentinels, who likewise saw an officer follow her and 
kiss her. The sentinels knew him — it was the Little 
Corporal. But he saw them also, and his sharp word of 
command rang out, " Shoulder arms ! " " Right about 
turn ! " They turned, and they stayed turned, fixed and 
immovable, until the relief came an hour or so later. 

So much for the bright side of this famous picture. 



By the most astonishing series of duplicities and perfi- 
dies, Napoleon gathered into his snare at Bayonne all the 
contending parties of the Spanish trouble, — King Charles, 



XXXI HIGH-WATER MARK 421 

the Queen, Godoy, Ferdinand, and Don Carlos, Ferdinand's 
younger brother. 

These Bourbons washed their dirty family linen in his 
presence, appealing to him against each other. Ferdi- 
nand's royal father shook a cane over his head and cursed 
him ; Ferdinand's royal mother reviled him, and told him 
that the king, her husband, was not his father; and 
Godoy, the paramour of the wife and mother, sat down 
to meat with King and Queen, indispensably necessary to 
both. Charles IV., fond of pleasure and ease, resigned 
the crown of Spain to Napoleon ; Ferdinand was asked 
to do likewise. He refused, and it was not till there 
had been an uprising in Madrid, cruelly suppressed by 
Murat, who lost nearly a thousand men, that he yielded. 
The revolt had been laid at his door, and Napoleon had 
threatened to treat him as a rebel- 
Charles and Ferdinand became grandees of France, with 
princely revenues ; in return Napoleon received Spain and 
its magnificent dependencies (May, 1808). 

Calling Joseph Bonaparte from Naples to wear this 
new crown. Napoleon wished to give to the transfer some 
show of national consent. He summoned an assembly of 
Spanish prelates and grandees to Bayonne (June, 1808). 
They came, but as they came the ground upon which they 
walked was hot with revolt. All Spain was spontaneously 
and furiously running to arms. The assembly at Bayonne 
accepted Joseph and the constitution which Napoleon had 
prepared. 

In all courts and cabinets Napoleon's conduct was hotly 
discussed ; in most of them it was furiously condemned. 
True, he had not used Spain much more unscrupulously 
than he had treated Venice ; nor, indeed, more perfidiously 



422 NAPOLEON chap. 

than England had dealt with India, Russia with Poland, 
Prussia with Silesia. But there were two considerations 
which weighed heavily against Napoleon : he was not a 
legitimate king, and he was getting more than his share. 
The small men began to ask, one the other, concerning the 
meat upon which this our Csesar fed ; and to say, one to 
the other, that they, the small men, might, by union and 
patience and perseverance, pull the big man down. 

The more closely his statecraft is studied, the more 
clearly will it be seen that in all things he ' conformed to 
orthodox standards. He was neither better nor worse 
than others. His march to power was bridged with broken 
promises, pitiless deeds, utter disregard of human life, and 
the rights of other peoples. A foe was an obstacle, which 
must be got out of the way. If fair means would answer, 
well and good; if fair means would not answer, then foul 
methods would be used. Precisely the same principles 
have been constantly practised by all conquerors, all con- 
quering nations. Russia, England, Prussia, France — the 
same policy built empires for each. The Russian Czar, 
Alexander, fawned upon the Swedish minister, swearing 
friendship and good intentions when the Russian legions 
were already on the march to seize Finland. Russian 
faith was solemnly pledged afterward to the Finns them- 
selves, that their autonomy, their local institutions, should 
never be destroyed. In our own day, we have seen a 
most Christian Czar violate this written contract and 
pitilessly Russianize helpless Finland. 

England's empire is built on force and fraud ; Prussia's 
greatness rests on Frederick's crime against Silesia: 
France under Napoleon merely conformed to the well- 
known precedents. Ambitious and despotic, he made 



xxxi HIGH-WATER MARK 423 

war upon the weak, to shut out English goods, to cripple 
English commerce, and to bring her to terms of peace. 
This was bad enough, but we have lived to see things that 
were worse. We have seen England make war upon 
China to compel her to open her ports to the deadly- 
opium trade — deadly to the Chinese, but most profitable 
to the English trader. We have lived to see a Dutch 
republic trampled out of existence because it would not 
allow English gold-miners to rule it. 

Let us put away cant and lies and hypocrisy ; let us 
frankly admit that Napoleon was a colossal mixture of the 
good and the bad, just as Cromwell was, just as Richelieu, 
Frederick, and Bismarck were. Those retained attorneys 
of royalism, clericalism, and absolutism, who gravely com- 
pile huge books to prove that Napoleon was a fiend, 
an evil spirit struggling against light, are the absurdest 
mortals extant. Even Spain now knows better ; and 
the national revolt there at this era is against the very 
system the great democratic despot would have over- 
thrown. " Down with the Jesuits ! " they cry in all the 
cities of Spain in this year 1901. They are just a cen- 
tury behind time. Napoleon, a hundred years ago, put 
down the Jesuit and his Inquisition, swept feudalism 
away, gave just laws and representative government to 
a priest-ridden, king-accursed people. They were not 
ready for the boon, and repelled it. With mad infatuation 
Spaniards listened to monk and grandee and English mar- 
plot. Passion flamed, and reason fled. Blind hatred of 
all things French took possession of men, women, and 
children throughout the land. Peasants were even more 
frantic than princes and peers. Deeds of heroism, of self- 
sacrifice, of cruelty were done which amazed the world. 



424 NAPOLEON 



CHAP. XXXI 



By desperate persistence, the Spaniards succeeded in get- 
ting back their good old system — Bourbon king, privileged 
aristocracy, priestly tyranny, feudal extortions. Great 
Britain kindly sent armies and subsidies to aid the good 
work. Spain got the old system back, and much good 
has it done her. It has eaten the heart out of a great 
people, made her name a byword among nations, stranded 
her in the race of human progress. To-day she compre- 
hends what she lost a hundred years ago. 



CHAPTER XXXII 

TTTHEN Captain Marbot, bearing despatches from Murat 
announcing the riot in Madrid, reached the chateau 
of Marrac, he found the Emperor in the park, taking his 
after-dinner walk, with the Queen of Spain on his arm and 
Charles IV. beside him, followed by the Empress Josephine, 
Prince Ferdinand, Don Carlos, Marshal Duroc, and some 
ladies. 

" What news from Madrid ? " cried Napoleon, as Marbot, 
covered with dust, drew near. The despatches were de- 
livered in silence, and Napoleon drew to one side to read 
them, and to overwhelm the officer with questions. In 
vivid terms, Marbot described the despair of the Spanish 
people, the fury with which they had fought, the threaten- 
ing aspect of the populace even after the revolt had been 
put down. 

" Bah ! " exclaimed Napoleon, cutting him short ; " they 
will calm down and will bless me as soon as they see their 
country freed from the discredit and disorder into which it 
has been thrown by the weakest and most corrupt admin- 
istration that ever existed ! " 

When the Emperor had explained to the King and 
Queen of Spain what had occurred in Madrid, they turned 
upon Ferdinand with an outburst of rage. " Wretch ! " 
cried the old King, " you may now be satisfied. Madrid 

425 



426 NAPOLEON chap. 

has been bathed in the blood of my subjects shed in con- 
sequence of your rebellion against your father ; their blood 
be on your head ! " The Queen was no less bitter, and 
even offered to strike her son. Napoleon put a stop to the 
painful scene. 

" Bah ! they will soon calm down." So Napoleon thought, 
having no fear whatever that a tumultuous rising of peas- 
ants would make head against his troops. What his army 
had done in Italy and in Egypt, it could do in Spain. 
It only annoyed him, and somewhat puzzled him, to see that 
the people should reject his liberal constitution, and devote 
themselves with such frantic zeal to the most worthless of 
Bourbon kings. That Joseph would soon be in peaceful 
possession of the peninsula, that his generals would soon 
sweep the peasant bands out of the field, he did not doubt. 
Had he lacked faith as to this, he would probably not have 
given the crown to Joseph, — the placid, self-satisfied, com- 
prehensively incapable Joseph. Had he dreamed of the 
long years of war that were to follow, he might have 
hearkened to the pleadings of Murat, and left that brill- 
iant soldier to defend the crown which he so ardently 
coveted. 

Amid ovations the Emperor and Josephine toured the 
provinces, on the return trip to Paris, everywhere wel- 
comed with joy and admiration, while in the peninsula the 
great storm was muttering. Throughout Spain, in the 
highways and byways, from pulpit to market-place, 
Napoleon was denounced, defied, and resisted. Priests 
led the crusade, cursing the man of the Concordat as anti- 
Christ, minister of the devil, worthy of death and damna- 
tion. Committees of defence, juntas, sprang up every- 
where ; armies mustered almost at the stamp of the foot. 



XXXII SPAIN 427 

Wherever a Frenchman could be stabbed, shot from am- 
bush, or taken and sawn asunder, it was done. Roads 
were lined with ambuscades, stragglers and detached 
parties cut off, and the French generals were soon thrown 
on the defensive by this despised uprising of the people. 
At Saragossa and Valencia the French troops were 
repulsed; in Andalusia hordes of Spaniards surrounded 
Dupont's army of twenty thousand, beat it in battle, and 
forced it to capitulate (Baylen, July, 1808). 

In August the English landed troops in Portugal ; and 
Junot, whose forces were scattered, fought with only 
thirteen thousand men against Wellington with sixteen 
thousand, was worsted at Vimeiro (August 21, 1808) 
and by the convention of Cintra (August 30, 1808) 
agreed to evacuate Portugal. He, too, had wanted to 
become a king ; he, too, had thought of himself rather 
than of his master ; he, too, had wrecked a splendid plan 
by sheer mismanagement and monstrous rapacity. 

The disaster in Spain and Portugal came upon Napo- 
leon like a thunderbolt; his grief and indignation knew 
no bounds ; cries of rage and pain were wrung from him ; 
pointing to his uniform, he said, " There is a stain here." 
At Aboukir, Brueys had at least fought and died like a 
soldier; at Trafalgar Frenchmen had shown desperate 
valor; but at Baylen an army of twenty thousand impe- 
rial troops had laid down their arms to gangs of insur- 
gents ! Oh, the shame of it ! Who could estimate its 
effect in Europe? When the Emperor spoke of Baylen 
to his council of state, his voice trembled, and his eyes 
were full of tears. 

Conscious of the peril which menaced* his supremacy, 
Napoleon determined to go in person and put down the 



428 NAPOLEON chap. 

Spanish revolt. But before doing so it was necessary 
that he and the Czar should have another conference, 
smooth over certain points of difference which had arisen, 
and come to a better understanding — hence the famous 
gathering at Erfurth (October, 1808). This time Alexan- 
der was Napoleon's guest, and very royally was he enter- 
tained. A more brilliant assembly was never seen in 
Europe. Subject kings, vassals, lords of the Empire, 
civil and military dignitaries, courtiers, ambassadors, dip- 
lomats, eminent men of letters, surrounded the two great 
Emperors, and rendered homage. Business and pleasure 
intermingled; and while frontiers of empire were being 
arranged, there were banquets, balls, grand hunts, orches- 
tral music, and the drama. Actors brought from Paris 
played to the Emperors and their trains, and the Czar 
stood up one night and took Napoleon's hand at the line 
"the friendship of a great man is a gift from the gods." 
Davoust used to say that Napoleon had been nodding till 
the Czar improvised this little by-play. 

If Napoleon was anxious for the future of his power, 
he concealed it well ; his face showed nothing but serenity, 
good nature, and confidence. He found time to converse 
at length with Goethe and Wieland ; he found time to act 
the suave host to lords and ladies ; he was as firm with 
Alexander as he had been at Tilsit ; and when the confer- 
ence broke up, he had arranged everything as completely 
to his satisfaction. 

In the Memoirs of Marshal Oudinot, we find the follow- 
ing anecdote of the Erfurth meeting : — 

"Napoleon had occasional fits of forgetfulness which 
prevented him from displaying, in his relations with the 
sovereigns, all the forethought expected in a host. 



XXXII SPAIN 429 

" One day we were riding into the country, the two 
Emperors, Napoleon and Alexander, riding side by side. 
At a given moment, the former, carried away by his 
thoughts, took the lead, whistling, and seeming to for- 
get those he was leaving behind. I shall always re- 
member Alexander, turning stiffly toward his neighbor, 
and asking, 'Are we to follow?' 'Yes, sire.' I rejoined 
Napoleon and told him of this little scene. He fell back, 
offered an explanation, and that was the end of it." 

So Marshal Oudinot thought, but as the compiler of the 
Memoirs asks, who knows what influence this trifling inci- 
dent may have had upon the proud, sensitive, suspicious, 
and wavering Czar ? 

By the terms of the new agreement, Alexander was to 
have a free hand on the Danube to take Moldavia and 
Wallachia ; that much had been understood at Tilsit, per- 
haps, but " Constantinople, never ! That is the empire 
of the world ! " In return for the liberty to seize the 
Danubian provinces, the Czar was to keep central Europe 
quiet, while Napoleon conquered Spain and Portugal. 
Prussia was notified by the Czar that she must remain 
quiet, bow to Napoleon's will, and agree to his demands, 
one of which was that Stein should be dismissed. 

To Germans, generally, the heavy hand of the Czar, 
coming down upon Frederick William in this imperative 
fashion, must have suggested the thought that it was 
high time the Lord's Anointed autocrat of Russia was 
being sworn to friendship to Prussia, once more, at the 
tomb of the great Frederick. The two oaths already taken 
seemed to have slipped their hold. 

Suppose that Napoleon had solemnly gone in state to 
the Escorial and there, at night, had taken in his own the 



430 NAPOLEON chap. 

hand of the Spanish king, and had, over the bones of dead 
Spanish monarchs, sworn eternal friendship to Spain; sup- 
pose he had broken this vow as soon as made ; suppose he 
had gone the second time and sworn it all over again ; 
suppose he had violated his oath a second time : — would 
royalist and clerical authors ever have found ink black 
enough to fill their righteously indignant pens ? 

If we would correctly judge Napoleon, let us keep our 
equilibrium and our standards of comparison; let us 
throw him into contrast, not with the ideal man, but 
with other rulers of his own time. By so doing we may 
hope to come, in the humblest spirit and manner, to know 
the great Corsican as he actually was. 

Once more an effort was made to put an end to war. 
The two Emperors sent couriers, — one French and the other 
Russian, — to England, bearing offers of peace. These cou- 
riers were treated almost as spies by the English, were kept 
under surveillance, and were finally sent back with a note 
which gave no encouragement to the monarchs who sent 
them. 

King Joseph had been driven out of Madrid, was now 
at Vittoria, and the insurgents controlled the country with 
the exception of the soil occupied by the French armies. 

Losing no time after the Erfurth interview. Napoleon 
hastened to Spain, took command of the troops at Vittoria 
(November 6, 1808), and moved forward. In a few days the 
entire military situation was changed. The Spaniards were 
out-generalled, beaten at all points, and escaped complete 
annihilation by the too great haste of some of the French 
generals. Within four weeks after the commencement of 
the campaign, Madrid was retaken, and once more put 
into the possession of the feeble Joseph. 



xxxn SPAIN 431 

On his march to the Spanish capital, Napoleon found 
his road blocked at the mountain pass of Sommo-Sierra. 
The insurgents had fortified the heights, their cannon 
completely controlling the defile. So strong was the posi- 
tion that a handful of veterans there might have checked 
an army. 

But the impudence of these Spanish bands in presuming 
to resist his march threw Napoleon into a fury. He would 
not wait till his infantry could advance upon either side, 
turn the enemy, and almost certainly secure a bloodless 
victory. He raged and stormed, "What! my army 
stopped by armed bands, wretched peasants ! " 

"Patience, sire, I pray," pleaded General Walthour, 
who assured him that in a few minutes the pass would be 
cleared by infantry, which was even then advancing on 
either side. But no; the enemy must be charged with 
cavalry — a bristling battery, on the crest of a mountain 
gorge, must be swept out of the way by a cavalry dash. 

" Go, Sdgur ! Go at once ; make my Poles charge, make 
them take everything ! " 

There was astonishment — but the order had to be 
obeyed. At full speed the splendid soldiers of the Polish 
squadron dashed up the pass, to melt away in an awful fire 
from the battery above. Historians say that the cavalry 
charge succeeded. Segur, who led the dash and was shot 
down in it, relates that the flanking infantry columns did 
the work. 

"Does anybody know how S^gur came to be hurt? Was 
he carrying an order?" Napoleon asked, after the battle. 

When reminded that he had himself given S^gur the 
order, he was silent, and "fell into a very thoughtful 
mood." 



432 NAPOLEON chap. 

An English army under Sir John Moore had entered 
Spain and was advancing toward Madrid. When it 
learned that Napoleon was in the field, it began a retreat 
to the coast, which is famous in military history. The 
French, led by the Emperor, set out in hot pursuit; 
and it would be hard to say with certainty which party 
suffered the more frightful hardships, — the pursuers or the 
pursued. The weather was bitterly cold, with cutting 
winds, chilly rains, blinding snowstorms. In crossing 
the Gaudamara Mountains the storm was so fierce, the 
cold and the snow so terrible, that the advance guard of 
Napoleon actually began to retreat. It required all the 
Emperor's personal influence and example to encourage 
the men onwards. Dismounting, he trudged along on 
foot, Lannes and Duroc on either side, and hour after hour 
he plodded thus through the snow, up the mountain, 
at the head of his men. Near the summit, on account 
of the jackboots the officers wore, they could go no 
farther. Napoleon was lifted on to a gun carriage, and 
riding on a cannon, he reached the top, his generals 
similarly mounted. By forced marches the French were 
pushed on in the hope of cutting off the English retreat, 
but it could not be done. Horribly as they suffered, 
the English were not wholly demoralized. There were 
always some gallant thousands who would turn and fight 
when the French pressed them too hard. In this way 
the pursuers met bloody repulses. Many frightful 
scenes took place among the English ; but General 
Marbot relates an incident of the French pursuit which 
throws a vivid light over the hideous character of this 
whole campaign. He saw three French grenadiers kill 
themselves because they were tired out, could no longer 



XXXII SPAIN 433 

keep up, and chose death rather than the tortures 
which awaited them if they fell into the hands of the 
Spanish peasants. 

Napoleon was so deeply impressed by the suicide of his 
grenadiers that in spite of the drenching rain and bitter 
cold he went the rounds of the bivouac that night, 
speaking to the wretched soldiers and trying to restore 
their courage. 

At Astorga a courier arrived, bringing despatches from 
Paris which warned Napoleon that Austria was ready now 
"to begin again." She had completely reorganized her 
army, had patiently waited for the right moment, and was 
sure that it had come. The veteran troops of France were 
scattered over the Spanish peninsula ; England had made 
good her grip on Portugal ; Austria had about five hun- 
dred thousand soldiers ready, and now was the time to 
strike. The pursuit of the English was turned over to 
Soult, and the race for the seacoast continued as before. 
When the French could overtake the English at all, it was 
with an advance guard too small to crush the English rear- 
guard. If there was a clash, the French were repulsed. 
If the French came up in force, the English continued the 
retreat. At last the coast was made. There was a bloody 
fight, the battle of Corunna. Sir John Moore was killed, 
but his army, or what remained of it, got on board the 
English ships and sailed away. 

As to Napoleon, he returned to Valladolid, where he 
busied himself for several days regulating the affairs of 
Spain, and in sending off innumerable despatches. Then 
springing upon his horse, he spurred away for Bayonne, in 
perhaps the wildest ride an emperor ever made. His 
escort clattered after him, strung out behind, and the 

2f 



434 NAPOLEON chap, xxxii 

wondering peasants of Spain long remembered that 
meteoric vision. They heard in the distance a faint noise 
as of frantic racing; there burst into view a breathless 
cavalcade ; it came on like a wind-driven cloud ; there was 
a rush, and a noise like thunder, a fleeting glimpse of bent 
riders and straining steeds ; there was, perhaps, a shout 
in passing ; then it went as it came, and in a moment it 
was gone. 

General Thi^bault, on his way to Vittoria, was in the 
road, with carriage, aides, escort, and servants, when one 
of his attendants said, " Here comes the Emperor, I think." 
The General was about to alight from the carriage when 
he heard some one call : — 

" Who is in that carriage ? " 

The servant hardly had time to answer " General Thi^- 
bault " before the imperial party tore by. " Savary was 
first, after him the Emperor, lashing Savary's horse, and 
digging the spurs into his own. ... A good minute after- 
ward Duroc and the Emperor's Mameluke galloped by, and 
at a like distance from them came a guide, exhausted with 
his efforts to make up lost ground, and four more brought 
up the rear as best they could." 

From Valladolid to Burgos, some seventy-five miles. Na- 
poleon rode in three hours and a half (January, 1809). 



CHAPTER XXXIII 

"IT7HEN the Emperor reached Paris, he was in one of 
his worst moods. Many causes had combined to 
mar his serenity. His brother Joseph had violently 
found fault with him because he, Napoleon, had remod- 
elled the government, making it better for the people, 
and not quite so good for the nobles and priests. Joseph 
resented this deeply. He, Joseph, was King of Spain. 
He, Joseph, was the proper person to remodel govern- 
ment, change laws, and manage the country. Napoleon 
was present merely as a military expert, a general whose 
service Avas temporarily needed to pull Joseph from be- 
neath the enemy, and lead him by the hand back to the 
throne ; but when this had been done. Napoleon should 
have gone away, leaving Joseph to do in Spain just as he 
thought best. This view was not only held by Joseph at 
the time, but as long as his worthless life lasted he never 
wearied of explaining to his friends how Napoleon had 
lost him the crown of Spain by "interfering in his 
affairs" in 1809. 

Not less high than this was the estimate which Louis 
Bonaparte placed on his " rights " as King of Holland. 
No sooner had that morose, jealous, ill-conditioned dolt 
been placed on a throne by his elder brother than he 
arrogated to himself all the prerogatives of a dynastic 

436 



436 NAPOLEON chap 

king. The "divine right" virus got into Ms sluggish 
veins, and he began to shift on to God the responsibility 
for such a creature as himself being a king at all. He 
wished to rule Holland, not as a fief of the Empire, not 
as part of the Napoleonic system, but as a piece of inde- 
pendent property which had come to him, Louis, through 
a long line of ancestors. When Napoleon gave him the 
crown, the conditions were made plain. Holland was a 
part of France ; must be governed with reference to 
France ; the friends and enemies of the one must be 
those of the other. In other words, Holland was a planet 
in the French system, and Louis a subordinate king. 
If Louis was too proud to rule as a lesser light in the 
system of his great brother, he should have been as 
frank as Lucien : he should have refused the crown. 
But he accepted the splendid gift, and then violated 
the conditions. English goods poured into his markets. 
To all intents and purposes he became the ally of Great 
Britain, for it was her policy which he favored. It was 
her dearest object to break down the Continental system, 
and Louis was aiding her to the best of his slight ability. 
Could Napoleon be otherwise than furious ? Had Holland 
been won merely that England should be enriched ? Had 
he set his brother on a throne merely to weaken his own 
empire, and to set an example of disloyalty to other 
allies ? At a time when Prussia, Austria, and even Russia 
were under contract to enforce the Continental system, 
was it tolerable that his own brother, in all-important 
Holland, should be throwing his ports open to the com- 
mon foe ? 

This cause of trouble, also, was worrying Napoleon and 
making it hard to maintain good humor. And even this 



xxxin WAGRAM 437 

was far from being all. Murat, his brother-in-law, was 
acting almost as badly as his brother. Murat, who was 
grand duke, wanted to be king, had coveted the crown 
of Poland, had claimed the Spanish throne, and in his 
disappointment, in both instances, had fallen into a rebel- 
lious mood. 

Napoleon had given him Joseph's vacant throne in 
Naples ; but it was rumored that he was still discontented, 
and had been holding communications with conspirators 
in Paris. And who were these conspirators ? Talleyrand 
and Fouch^, of course. These restless, overrated, and 
chronic traitors had been sagely conferring in Paris, as 
they had done previous to Marengo, for the purpose of 
agreeing upon a successor to Napoleon, in case he should 
be killed in battle or hopelessly defeated. 

Nor was even this all : the funds had fallen, the treas- 
ury was drained, murmurs had begun to be heard in 
France against the expansion of the Empire ; conscrip- 
tions, which had been called for in advance of the legal 
time, began to be unpopular, desertions were frequent, 
and " the refractory " grew ever more numerous. The 
Spanish war was not relished. Generals ordered to Spain 
went, but went reluctantly. They carried no zeal, none 
of that buoyant confidence which is half the battle. 
Troops ordered there marched, but without enthusiasm. 
Compared with Italy and Germany Spain was a barren land. 
Against armed peasant bands no glory was to be won ; 
little booty could be expected. Even the Guard grumbled 
at such service. As Napoleon was holding a review at 
Valladolid just before quitting Spain, the murmurs in the 
ranks grew so loud that he lost control of himself, snatched 
the musket from one of the growlers, jerked the man out 



438 NAPOLEON chap. 

of the line, threatened to have him shot, and then pushed 
him back to his place while he sharply lectured the whole 
troop. 

Once more at Paris, Napoleon's courtiers grouped them- 
selves around him with the same blandishments as before. 
A few, a very few, might venture to speak frankly to him 
and to tell him the truth, but the many had fallen into 
the ways natural to all courts: they spoke, not to inform, 
but to please. And foremost among those who came to 
fawn and to flatter was " that cripple " whom Josephine 
said she dreaded, Talleyrand. 

Only dangerous to the weak, gifted with no constructive 
talent whatever, incapable of sustained labor of any sort, 
strong only in sudden emergencies, in the crises of politi- 
cal changes, Talleyrand was known to Napoleon like an 
open book. Scorning him, rather than fearing him. 
Napoleon's anger against him now was inflamed to the 
highest pitch, not so much because of anything he had 
done, as because of what his treachery implied. That so 
keen-eyed a time-server as Talleyrand should begin to 
plot, meant that confidence was shaken in the Napoleonic 
power. That the funds should fall, conscripts dodge the 
law, allies shirk their obligations, and domestic enemies 
conspire, were but various symptoms of the same malady. 

When Talleyrand appeared at the levee, Napoleon boiled 
over. He began to rebuke the false courtier, began in a 
moderate tone, but the more he talked the less he could 
control himself. All the past perfidies of this most per- 
fidious of men came to mind, and in bitter words were 
hurled at Talleyrand's head. His venalities, his bribe- 
takings, his betrayal of state secrets — they all swelled the 
torrent of Napoleon's excoriation. " You base wretch, you 



XXXIII WAGRAM 439 

false-hearted minister. You pretend that you advised 
against the trial of the Duke d'Enghien when you urged 
it in writing ; you pretend that you advised against the 
Spanish war when you urged me into it ! " 

And at each sentence Napoleon advanced, face distorted 
with passion, hand raised in menace, while the guilty 
courtier slunk back step by step as the Emperor advanced, 
until he reached the wall. There he stood, with Napoleon's 
clenched hand in his face and Napoleon's blazing eyes 
threatening death, warning him, as he loved life, to say 
nothing, and let the storm pass. 

When Talleyrand reached home, " he fell into a kind of 
fit," and the doctors had to be called in. Only a few days 
elapsed, however, before he was again at the levee, bending 
humbly before his master, and ready again with his fawn- 
ings and flatteries. Napoleon's anger had passed : he 
listened to the courtier's suave phrases with a smile of 
contemptuous indifference. 

France had given Austria no cause for war. It was not 
even claimed that she had. Austria had causelessly pro- 
voked two wars already, had got whipped in both, had 
lost much territory, much money, much prestige. She now 
believed she was strong enough to win back all she had 
lost — hence she had mustered her forces and commenced 
the march into Bavaria. Her readiness to " begin again " 
had been accelerated by a bribe of 120,000,000 paid her 
by England. 

Napoleon had massed troops at the point of danger, but 
had trusted to Berthier the direction of their movements. 
This officer had bungled matters so badly that the dif- 
ferent divisions were widely scattered ; and the troops, 
conscious that something was wrong, were becoming 



440 NAPOLEON chap. 

demoralized. Summoned by the signal telegraph, Napo- 
leon made all haste to headquarters. He found the army 
so ill-posted that he said to Berthier, " If I did not know 
you to be true to me, I should suspect that you were a 
traitor." 

The Archduke Charles, commanding the Austrians, had 
seen his advantage clearly, and was hastening to throw him- 
self between the separate divisions of the French, to beat 
them in detail. He commenced his campaign well, and it 
appeared certain that he would crush the corps of Davoust 
before it could be supported. But the Archduke was 
almost superstitiously afraid of Napoleon, and no sooner 
did he learn that the Emperor was now in command of the 
French than the Austrians seemed paralyzed. Time was 
given for Massena and Davoust to support each other, 
the one having been ordered to fall back while the other 
moved forward. Calculating to the hour when these two 
wings could support the centre, the great soldier fell 
upon his enemy. The risk was great ; for should his two 
lieutenants fail to come up, all would be lost. But 
Davoust and Massena were not Grouchys : they came, and 
the campaign was saved. Never was Napoleon greater in 
plan and execution than in 1809 ; not even in the Italian 
campaign did he work harder. For a week he was almost 
constantly in the saddle, never having time to undress. But 
in that week he wrought utter confusion among his enemies, 
and saved his empire. At Abensberg, at Landshut, at Eck- 
miihl, at Ratisbonne, he struck the Austrians blow after 
blow, and shattered their army, killing and wounding thirty 
thousand men, capturing an equal number, and taking vast 
spoil in guns, ammunition, stores, war material of all sorts. 
The Archduke drew off his broken army on Bohemia; 



xxxm WAGEAM 441 

Napoleon marched upon Vienna, which fell May 12, 1809. 
The royal family fled to Hungary ; the French Emperor, 
quartered at the palace of Schonbrunn, made preparations 
to cross the Danube. There were no bridges this time for 
Lannes and Murat to win by stratagem ; the river rolled 
broad and deep between French and Austrians ; bridges 
would have to be built, and the French put across in face 
of an army ready to dispute the passage. 

Had not victory declared for Napoleon, promptly and 
emphatically at the opening of the campaign, his ruin 
would have come in 1809 as it did in 1814. The national 
spirit was declaring against him in Germany, as it had 
done in Spain. Prussia was honeycombed with patriotic 
secret societies, pledged against him ; and in anticipation 
of Austrian success, the young Duke of Brunswick and 
Colonel Schill had raised the standard of revolt. The 
decisive victory of the French at Eckmiihl alone prevented 
this abortive effort at a national uprising from being a 
success. In the Tyrol, also, the people, intensely Catholic 
and opposed to the reforms Bavaria had introduced, rose 
against the Napoleonic power, and failed only because the 
French had been so prompt in scattering the strength of 
Austria. 

In the crisis, Napoleon's ally, Russia, had shown little 
zeal. She sent a very small army where she had promised 
a large one ; and a general of their army wrote to the 
Austrian commander that he hoped they would soon be act- 
ing in concert. Napoleon forwarded this letter to Alex- 
ander, who contented himself with the recall of the writer. 
But for the heroic conduct of Poniatowski and the Poles, 
it seems that the Austrian army would have succeeded 
in wresting the Grand Duchy of Warsaw from Saxony. 



442 NAPOLEON chap. 

But Napoleon's triumplis at the opening of the cam- 
paign changed the aspect of affairs all around. Austrian 
armies had to be called in from Warsaw, from Italy, 
from Bohemia, to concentrate and oppose Napoleon on the 
Danube. 

Choosing a position below Vienna, where the large island 
of Lobau divides the stream into two unequal channels, 
the French threw bridges across, and on May 20 com- 
menced passing over, taking possession of the villages of 
Aspern and Essling, almost without opposition. Next 
day the Archduke Charles made a furious attack, first 
on Aspern, then on Essling also. The struggle was very 
bloody. Only a portion of the French had passed the 
river; the Austrians outnumbered them heavily; and, 
realizing this vast advantage, pushed it with splendid 
energy. Aspern was taken and retaken time after time ; 
and when night put an end to the carnage, the French 
held only a portion of the smouldering ruins. Next day 
the battle was renewed, the French army still cut in two 
by the Danube. The corps of Davoust had not passed, 
and the Austrians were doing their utmost to break the 
bridges, which a sudden rise in the river already threatened 
to carry away. 

So strong had been the efforts of the enemy to carry 
Aspern on their right, that Napoleon guessed they had 
weakened their centre too much. He therefore massed 
lieavy columns against it, and began to drive it back. At 
this moment came the dreaded message, — "The bridges 
are gone ! " 

He might have pressed on and beaten his foe, but Napo- 
leon thought the risk too great. His columns halted, 
their fire slackened, and the orders to retire were given. 



ixxiii WAGRAM 443 

The wondering Austrians took fresh courage, and followed 
the retiring French with terrible effect. Massena must 
hold Aspern, Lannes Essling, until the Emperor could 
get the army back to the island of Lobau. Aspern was 
everything ; it must be held at all hazards. 

" Hold your position ! It is a question of saving the 
army — the bridges are gone ! " So ran the despatch, 
and the grim soldier who held Genoa while Napoleon 
planned Marengo, now held Aspern while his Emperor 
prepared for Wagram. 

Poor Lannes ! Brave, unselfish, plain-spoken, leonine 
Lannes ! Here his long march was to end. The same 
year that Madame Letitia in Corsica had begun to 
rock the cradle of Napoleon, the wife of an humble 
dyer in Gascony had begun to nurse the babe who be- 
came the Roland of Bonaparte's army. He had little 
education, no influential friends ; but when the Revolution 
began to sound its tocsin and beat its drum, the Gascon 
lad went forth to the wars. From 1791, when he volun- 
teered as grenadier, he had served without pause and with 
unsurpassed courage. Augereau made him colonel for 
bravery in the Pyrenees ; and Napoleon made him general 
for brilliant service in Italy. He followed his chief to 
Egypt, and was shot through the neck at Acre. On the 
famous Sunday of Brumaire he aided in Napoleon's seiz- 
ure of supreme power, and at Montebello fought the 
prelude to Marengo. He had loved Caroline Bonaparte, 
whom Murat won ; and had Lannes instead of Murat been 
the imperial brother-in-law, much disaster might have 
been averted. Raised in rank, made marshal of the Em- 
pire, and Duke of Montebello, he was the same intrepid, 
ever growing, ever loyal soldier. Great at Austerlitz, 



444 NAPOLEON chap. 

great at Jena, great at Friedland, he was greater yet at 
Saragossa where he overcame a resistance which challenged 
the wonder of the world. 

From that ruined city in Spain he had hastened to Ger- 
many, and had been again the right hand of the great 
captain who so well knew his worth. Better courtiers 
there were than Lannes, gallants who better graced a ball- 
room, flatterers who could better please the ear. But who 
of all the brave men of France could walk the battle-field 
with surer, steadier step than he ? 

Who at heart was more loyal to the chief — who so 
ready to forsake ease and comfort and go forth at the call 
of the chief into rain or snow, heat or cold, exhausting 
march or desperate battle ? In all the long record of 
French heroism, who had done deeds more lionlike than 
Lannes ? 

Who was first over the bridge at Lodi, outstripping 
Napoleon and all, and slaying six Austrians with his own 
hand? Who led the vanguard across the frozen Alps 
and held the rout at Marengo till Desaix could come ? 
Who, in this last campaign, had rallied the grenadiers be- 
neath the blazing walls of Ratisbonne, seized a scaling 
ladder, when the bravest held back, and had rushed toward 
the battlements under a withering fire, shouting to his halt- 
ing men, " I'll show you that I've not forgotten I was once 
a grenadier ! " Who but Lannes had electrified these 
troops by his fearless example, and had carried them over 
the walls ? 

At Essling he had been in the thick of the fight, holding 
his ground with old-time grip. The slaughter had been 
immense, and the sight of the mangled body of General 
Pouzet, shot down at his side, had affected him painfully. 



XXXIII WAGRAM 446 

Sick of the hideous spectacle, he had gone a little to one 
side, and had seated himself on the embankment of a trench. 

A quarter of an hour later, four soldiers, laboriously car- 
rying in a cloak a dead officer whose face could not be 
seen, stopped in front of Lannes. The cloak fell open, 
and he recognized Pouzet. "Oh ! " he cried, "is this ter- 
rible sight going to pursue me everywhere ? " Getting 
up, he went and sat doAvn at the edge of another ditch, his 
hand over his eyes, and his legs crossed. As he sat there 
a three-pounder shot struck him just where his legs crossed. 
The knee-pan of one was smashed, and the back sinews of 
the other torn. General Marbot ran to him ; he tried to 
rise, but could not. He was borne back to the bridge, and 
one of his limbs amputated. Hardly was the operation 
over when Napoleon came up. " The interview," says 
Marbot, from whose Memoirs this account is literally 
taken, "was most touching. The Emperor, kneeling be- 
side the stretcher, wept as he embraced the marshal, whose 
blood soon stained the Emperor's white kerseymere waist- 
coat." 

"You will live, my friend, you will live ! " cried the 
Emperor, pressing the hand of Lannes. "I trust I 
may, if I can still be of service to France and to your 
Majesty." 

The weather was terribly hot, and fever set in with 
Lannes ; on May 30th he died. In spite of the cares and 
dangers of his position, Napoleon had found time to visit 
the wounded man every day. A few moments after day- 
break on the 30th, the Emperor came as usual, when 
Marbot met him and told him of the sad event. The 
amputated limb had mortified, and the stench was so 
strong that Marbot warned Napoleon against going in. 



446 NAPOLEON chap. 

Pushing Marbot aside, the Emperor advanced to the dead 
body, embraced it, wept over it, reniained more than an 
hour, and only left when Berthier reminded him that 
officers were waiting for orders. 

" What a loss for France and for me ! " Well may 
Napoleon have grieved and wept : here was a gap in his 
line that could never be filled. Said the Emperor at St. 
Helena, "I found him a pygmy; I lost him a giant."" 



The bridges connecting the island of Lobau with the 
bank of the Danube upon which the army had been fight- 
ing were not broken : hence the troops could be led back 
to the island. Once there, the position could be fortified 
and held, until the Vienna arm of the river could be 
rebridged. 

This was done. Several weeks were spent in prepara- 
tions, reenforcements brought up, larger, better bridges 
built, and all made ready for another attempt to cross. 

The Archduke Charles, believing that Napoleon would 
direct his march upon Aspern and Essling, as before, 
calmly waited, confident that he could beat the French 
as before. On the night of July 4, 1809, while a ter- 
rible thunderstorm was raging, Napoleon began his at- 
tack upon the Austrian position at Essling and Aspern. 
This was a feint to hide his purpose of crossing at an- 
other place, in front of Enzersdorf. 

While the Archduke's attention was fixed on the two 
villages first named, the French made a dash at Enzers- 
dorf, and took it. Several bridges, ready-made, had been 
thrown across the river here, and Napoleon's army had 
passed almost before the Austrian knew what he was 



XXXIII WAGRAM 447 

about. Then the Archduke drew back into the vast 
plain of the Marchfeld, and three hundred thousand 
men lined up for the great battle of Wagram. From the 
roofs and ramparts of Vienna, excited thousands gazed 
upon that vast wheat field, yellow in the summer sun, 
where the harvester Death was to reap where humble 
peasants had sown. 

- For two days the tremendous struggle lasted. The 
Austrians never fought better. In sight of fathers and 
sons, of wives, daughters, sisters, sweethearts, who would 
not fight well for home and native land ? What did 
the Austrian soldier know of the cause of the war ? He 
knew as much as his masters chose to tell him ; and in 
his heart he believed the French to be aggressors, ty- 
rants, marauders, come to loot and ruin and enslave. 

So they stood amid the burning wheat in the golden 
grain fields, beneath the torrid sun, and fought as Napo- 
leon had never seen them fight — fought as men fight 
only when their souls are in it. And far off on the 
housetops, steeples, and battlements of old Vienna were 
straining eyes, beating hearts, hungry prayers, and the 
wild hope that these marauders from France would be 
scattered as the Turks had been scattered in that dread 
time long ago. 

But in those olden days Christians could hear the cry 
of Christians, could fly to the relief of Christians. What 
bannered host was that which had burst like a storm upon 
the Moslem rear, scattering infidels like so much dust, 
bringing salvation to the beleaguered town ? Who but the 
Polanders and John Sobieski had smitten the Turk and 
sent the crescent backward in flight before the cross? 
That was many and many a year ago. There would be 



448 NAPOLEON chap. 

no " Poland to the rescue ! " this time. Poland had been 
devoured — by Moslems? No; by Christians. And at 
the feast Austria had sat, greedily eating her share. 

The shells set fire to the wheat; the smoke and the 
flame from the burning grain mingled with the smoke and 
flame of batteries. Troops moving to the charge were 
halted or turned from their course ; the wounded fell in 
the midst of the blazing stubble, and were burnt to death 
or suffocated. 

Nothing could withstand the French. The Austrian 
leader outclassed by his antagonist, the long trial of 
strength yielded victory at length to the better soldier. 
The efforts made on the wings had weakened the Arch- 
duke's centre. Massena, though terribly shaken, was 
able to hold the right, while Napoleon massed all his 
available force to' hurl it upon the Austrian centre. 
But he must wait. Nothing could be done until Davoust 
on the enemy's left had succeeded. Motionless as a 
rock. Napoleon kept his ej'^es riveted on Neusiedel, a 
village "which lies high and is surmounted by a tall 
tower visible from all parts of the field." Davoust must 
fling the Austrians back behind this village before the 
attack on the centre could be made. " At last we sud- 
denly saw the smoke of Davoust's guns beyond the tower." 
Now the enemy's left was beaten. " Quick ! quick ! " 
cried the Emperor to Aide-de-camp Marbot, who had come 
from Massena to ask instructions. " Tell Massena to fall 
upon whatever is in front of him, and the battle is won ! " 
All along the line flashed similar orders, while Mac- 
donald, a hundred cannon blazing along his front, made 
the famous charge which broke the Austrian centre. 

It was a great fight, a great victory, and great were its 



xxxiii WAGRAM 449 

results. Austria sued for peace, and Napoleon, ready as 
he ever was to end a war, granted her terms as generous 
as she had any right to expect. She lost territory, and 
had to pay an indemnity; but out" of wreck which she 
herself had made, her empire came forth practically intact. 

As indemnity, she was asked to pay $20,000,000. This 
was the amount of the bribe she had taken from England 
to begin the war. 

An indemnity of 120,000,000 ! How trivial this amount 
when compared to the one thousand millions which Bis- 
marck levied upon France. How modest it looks beside 
the $330,000,000 which China had to pay to Christian 
missionaries and their supporting nations for the riots of 
the year 1900 ! 



2o 



CHAPTER XXXIV 

A FTER the French defeat at Aspern (May 22, 1809), 
and while they were shut up in the island of Lobau, 
it had seemed that Napoleon's position was almost desper- 
ate. The Tyrolese were in revolt, and had expelled the 
French and Bavarians; the young Duke of Brunswick 
had invaded Saxony and driven Napoleon's vassal king 
from his capital. Popular insurrections broke out in 
Wiirtemberg and Westphalia; England was holding her 
ground in Portugal, and was preparing an armament to 
fall upon the Dutch coast. Prussian statesmen, officers, 
preachers, poets, and patriots were clamoring for war. In 
this anxious crisis the courage and confidence of Napoleon 
were perfect. To beat the Austrians in his front was the 
one thing he must do. Succeeding in that, resistance else- 
where would disappear. Failing in that, all was lost. 
Thus Napoleon had reasoned, and he had judged rightly. 
After Wagram his peril passed. Austria, after having 
pledged faith to the Tyrolese, coldly deserted them, and 
they were crushed. Brunswick's effort failed as Schill's 
had failed; popular insurrections were stamped out; 
Prussia dared not move ; and England's " Walcheren 
expedition" against Flushing and Antwerp ended in 
utter failure and heavy loss. Everywhere Napoleon's 
Empire stood the test : Eugene beat the Austrians in 

450 



CHAP. XXXIV THE DIVORCE 451 

Italy ; and Wellington, after defeating Victor at Talavera, 
was driven back into Portugal by Soult. Out of the 
storm which had threatened his very existerice, Napoleon 
came forth with frontiers extended to the borders of 
Turkey, cutting off Austria from the sea — an empire 
stretching in unbroken line from Bosnia to the straits 
of Calais. 

Never had Napoleon's power seemed so great, nor his 
court so splendid. His vassal kings came to Paris with 
brilliant retinues, the kings of Saxony, Bavaria, Westphalia, 
Wiirtemberg, and Naples, the Viceroy of Italy, the Queen 
of Holland, besides princes and dukes by the dozen. Paris 
had become the capital of Continental Europe, and from 
Paris went forth the law to eighty million people. All 
Frenchmen realized the grandeur of this huge empire ; 
but many a wise Frenchman was oppressed by anxieties. 
What if the Emperor should suddenly die ? Would the 
succession go quietly to his brothers, or would the 
mighty fabric fall to pieces? All this power, all this 
splendor, hung as by a single hair upon the life of 
Napoleon ; and there were others besides Talleyrand and 
Fouche who speculated upon what should be done if the ; 
Emperor should fall in battle. When the bullet struck 
his toe at Ratisbonne, the troops broke ranks and crowded 
toward him in their breathless eagerness to know whether 
he were seriously hurt ; and the far-seeing said, " Suppose 
the ball had struck two feet higher ! " When it became 
known that a young German fanatic, Staps, bent on assas- 
sinating the Emperor, had almost reached him with his 
knife when stopped, the same uneasy feeling prevailed. 
Too much depended on this one life. The Emperor had 
no bodily heir ; by Josephine he would never have one ; 



452 NAPOLEON chap. 

the favorite nephew, Hortense's son, the little Napoleon, 
might have been adopted, but he died of croup in Holland. 



His power in the north being now secure, it was expected 
that Napoleon would take charge of the war in the south, 
and end it. He could easily have done so, England had 
less than thirty thousand troops there, and the native sol- 
diers, Spaniards and Portuguese, could not have stood 
against French veterans led by the greatest soldiers of 
all time. Besides, he could have crushed resistance by 
the mere weight of numbers. Why did he never return 
to Spain ? Joseph was blundering as stupidly as mortal 
could ; the French commanders were not acting in con- 
cert, but were pulling against each other ; things were 
going as badly as the English could reasonably expect ; 
and nowhere in the Empire was its Emperor needed worse 
than here. But Napoleon, once so quick to rush to the 
point of danger, let the " Spanish ulcer " run, year in and 
year out, with an apathy for which it is impossible to 
account. Either he had grown fonder of his personal 
ease, or the dreary kind of warfare necessary to reduce a 
national uprising did not appeal to his imagination, or he 
feared that in his absence the north might again give 
trouble, or he took an imperial pride in seeming to sa.y 
to the world that the insurrection in the south was too 
trifling a matter for his personal attention and could be 
left to his lieutenants. 

Whatever the motive, he astonished his enemies no less 
than his friends by failing to follow up Wagram with the 
complete conquest of the peninsula. Three hundred thou- 
sand French soldiers in Spain propped feeble Joseph on 



xxxiT THE DIVORCE 453 

his throne; but they were never able to put down resist- 
ance or expel the English. 

Another serious matter which might have been settled 
at this time was his quarrel with the Pope. 

The Concordat had accomplished great results for both 
contracting parties, and at first both were highly satisfied. 
Napoleon complacently rubbed his hands and declared, 
" With my soldiers, my prefects, and my priests I can do 
as I like." 

But, after all, the Concordat was a compromise. Neither 
party got quite what was wanted. Napoleon expected 
that there would result a clergy wholly dependent upon 
his will ; a Pope who would be a sort of clerical lieutenant 
obeying imperial orders, content to move as a lesser light 
in the Napoleonic system. The Pope, on the other hand, 
eagerly expected a restoration, gradually, of the former 
spiritual prestige of the Church. When Napoleon was 
seen to attend Mass, and kneel for blessing or prayer, cleri- 
cal fancy readily pictured the return of the good old times 
when pious Bourbon kings and their official mistresses had 
fallen on their knees at the feet of Jesuit confessors, and 
allowed the reins of government to be pulled by the 
Church. Especially did the Pope look for the restoration 
of his full temporal power, the return of the lost legations 
in Italy. 

Both parties found themselves in grievous error. Napo- 
leon not only believed he had done quite enough for the 
Church, but was inclined to think he had done too much. 
At any rate, he flatly declined to do more. He would not 
put priests in charge of the state schools ; he would not 
restore the legations. He was ready to lavish respectful 
attentions upon the head of the Church, ready to aid him 



454 NAPOLEON chab 

in restoring public worship, ready to fill his coffers with 
cash ; but in the Concordat, the solemn contract already- 
agreed on, he would make no change. 

So the Pope had left Paris after the coronation in ill- 
humor. He refused to crown Napoleon at Milan ; refused 
to annul Jerome's marriage ; refused to recognize Joseph 
Bonaparte as King of Naples ; refused to close his ports to 
English commerce. Professing neutrality, he became as 
much the enemy of France as he had been when an avowed 
member of the European league against the Revolution. 
Enemies of Napoleon flocked to Rome and found friendly 
welcome there. Fugitives from French justice took refuge 
under papal immunity, and were protected. The Roman 
court, as in the time of the Revolution, became a nucleus of 
anti-French sentiment and intrigue. Papal animosity to 
the French did not cool its ire when it saw him do in Spain 
what he had wished to do in Italy — abolish the Inquisi- 
tion. Napoleon complained, remonstrated, threatened — 
all to no purpose. Meekly obstinate, piously implacable, 
the Pope refused to come to terms, using God's name, of 
course, as a sanction to his own line of conduct. 

During the campaign of 1809 Napoleon proclaimed the 
abolition of the temporal power of the Pope, and the 
papal territories were incorporated in the kingdom of Italy. 
The Pope's spiritual powers were not challenged : his 
revenues were largely increased. The Pope protested, as 
usual, that the temporal power, lands, cities, rich revenues, 
were the patrimony of St. Peter, of God, and that he, 
the Pope, had no right to give them up. Napoleon, in 
effect, replied that what a French emperor had given, a 
French emperor could take away ; and that it ill became 
the successor of Peter and the vicar of the homeless, 



xxxiT THE DIVORCE 466 

moneyless Christ to be making such eternal clamor about 
money, wealth, lands, and earthly power and splendor. 
The situation at Rome, where French authorities and 
papal authorities were in conflict, became so embarrassing 
that the Pope was finally arrested, carried to Savona, and 
lodged in a palace there. Later, he was transferred to 
the magnificent chateau of Fontainebleau in France, where 
he was luxuriously lodged and treated as a prince. 

This complete rupture between Napoleon and the 
Church might never have been more than an annoyance, 
a crab nibbling at the toe of Hercules, had Napoleon con- 
tinued fortunate. But when disasters thickened, and his 
powers began to totter, the papal legions were not the 
weakest of those who assaulted his wavering lines. 

Well had it been for France had Napoleon, in 1810, 
given personal attention to the Spanish war ; equally 
well had he come to some terms with the Pope, who had 
excommunicated him. The longer each trouble was 
neglected, the more difficult its treatment became. 



Napoleon would not go to Spain, he would not settle 
his differences with the Pope ; but he made up his mind 
to bring to an issue another long-deferred and vitally 
important matter — that of divorcing Josephine. 

The Emperor must have an heir, the question of suc- 
cession must not be left open longer : political necessity 
was inexorable : ambition would tolerate no obstacle. 

Great as a man may become, he is human after all ; and 
Napoleon flinched from saying the fateful word to Jose- 
phine. From time to time he shrank from the pitiful 
task, and the way in which he led up to it is full of the 



456 NAPOLEON chaf. 

pathos which sometimes lies in small things. Whenever 
Napoleon was at home, it was the custom for a page to 
bring in coffee for the Emperor after dinner. Every day- 
Josephine herself would take the tray, pour the coffee, 
sweeten it, cool it, taste it, and hand it to Napoleon. 
Years had come and gone, and the little domestic custom 
had become as fixed as the relation of man and wife. 

At length came the day of days for them both, the dis- 
mal evening upon which Napoleon had resolved to speak. 
He was gloomy and sad ; she was red-eyed with weeping, 
wretched, waiting the word she dreaded and expected. 
Dinner was served, but neither ate, neither spoke. The 
Emperor rose from the table, she followed "with slow 
steps, her handkerchief over her mouth, as if to stifle her 
sobs." The page came with the coffee, offering the tray 
to the Empress, as he had always done. But Napoleon, 
looking steadily at Josephine, took the tray, poured the 
coffee, sweetened it, and drank ; and Josephine knew 
that they had reached the parting of the ways. The tray 
was handed back to the page, the attendants withdrew at 
a sign from the master. Napoleon closed the door, and 
then with face as cold and sad as death he spoke of the 
divorce. 

Constant, the valet, dreading "some terrible event," 
had sat down outside by the door. He heard shrieks, 
and rushed forward. The Emperor opened the door, the 
Empress was on the floor, " weeping and crying enough 
to break one's heart." They lifted her and bore her to 
her room. Napoleon assisting. There were tears in his 
eyes, and his voice was broken and trembling. It was 
a bitter night to them both, and Napoleon visited her 
room several times to inquire after her condition. 



XXXIV THE DIVOECE 467 

He did not sleep ; he did not utter a word to his atten- 
dants. "I have never seen him," writes Constant, "in 
such affliction." 

But his resolution stood, and on December 16, 1809, 
the divorce was formally pronounced. There was a final 
heart-breaking interview in Napoleon's bedchamber, to 
which the stricken wife had come to say good-by ; 
there were sobs and tears and tender, regretful words ; 
then Josephine, weeping, went back to her room, leaving 
Napoleon " silent as the grave, and so buried in his bed 
that it was impossible for one to see his face." 

The ex-Empress's humiliation was softened in every 
manner possible. She was regally endowed with pen- 
sions and estates ; she was treated with the most delicate 
respect ; the friendship between herself and Napoleon 
remained uninterrupted ; he delighted to do her honor ; 
and her place in the Empire remained one of dignity and 
grandeur. Once the Emperor, returning from the chase 
with the kings of Bavaria, Baden, and Wiirtemberg, 
stopped at Malmaison to pay the ex-Empress a visit, and 
spent an hour in the chateau with her while the three 
little kings waited and lunched at her gate. 



Napoleon's first thought was to wed a sister of the 
Czar of Russia, and proposals to that effect were made. 
The mother of the princess, however, was bitterly op- 
posed to Napoleon, and alleged that her daughter was 
too young. Alexander, greatly embarrassed, asked for 
time. To the impatient Emperor of the French this eva- 
sion seemed to cover a refusal, and he would not grant the 
delay. In the meantime the Austrian Cabinet, dreading 



458 NAPOLEON chaf. 

the increased strength which such a marriage would give 
to the Franco-Russian alliance, let it be known to Napoleon 
that if he asked for the daughter of the Emperor Francis, 
she would be promptly delivered. Irritated by the hesita- 
tion of the Romanoffs, and flattered by the advances of the 
Hapsburgs, Napoleon put his foot upon the " abyss cov- 
ered with flowers." On March 11, 1810, he was married 
by proxy to Maria Louisa in Vienna, and the bride set 
out at once for Paris. " Take as your standpoint that 
children are wanted," Napoleon had frankly written to 
his negotiator at St. Petersburg : and the Austrian prin- 
cess understood the situation thoroughly. After a trium- 
phal progress through the provinces of the Empire, she 
reached the French frontier, was formally received, her 
clothing all changed, her Austrian attendants relieved, 
and France, taking her precious person in custody, re- 
clothed her, surrounded her with a fresh lot of attendants, 
and hastened with her in the direction of Compiegne, 
where by appointment she was to meet her imperial 
spouse. Napoleon had himself dictated, to the minutest 
detail, every movement of the bridal party, and he awaited 
its coming with the utmost impatience, " cursing the cere- 
monial and the fetes which delayed the arrival of his 
young bride." 

At length when Maria was within ten leagues of Sois- 
sons. Napoleon broke from all restraint. 

At the top of his voice he shouted to his valet : " Heigho, 
Constant ! Order a carriage without livery, and come 
and dress me ! " 

He bathed, he perfumed, he dressed, laughing all the 
time like a boy at the effect which the surprise he was 
planning would produce on his bride. Over his uniform 



XXXIV ' THE DIVORCE 459 

he drew the gray overcoat he had worn at Wagram ; and 
calling Murat to go with him, he secretly left the park 
of Compiegne, entered the plain carriage, and dashed 
along the road beyond Soissons. The rain was pouring 
down when he and Murat reached Courcelles, where they 
left the carriage and stood in the porch of the church for 
the bridal train to come up. Signing to the postilions 
to stop, Napoleon had intended to reach Maria Louisa 
unannounced ; but the equerry, recognizing him, let down 
the step and called out, " His Majesty ! " 

" Didn't you see that I signed you to be silent ? " ex- 
claimed Napoleon, in a pet. But his ill-humor vanished 
at once, he hastened into the carriage, and flung his arms 
around the neck of his bride, who, nicely tutored, was all 
graceful submission, and who, looking from his face to his 
portrait which she held in her hand, remembered to say, 
" Your portrait does not flatter you." 

Napoleon was in ecstasies. He was a boy again, amo- 
rous, rapturous, seeing everything with the eyes of a 
lover. Soissons had prepared a magnificent reception 
and banquet, but Napoleon could not think of tarrying. 
He must hasten on to Compiegne with the blushing 
Maria that very night. " He made love like a hussar ! " 
some have sneered. So he did, and most men who are 
not invalids or frigid decadents make love like hussars. 
Furthermore, most women who are young, healthy, and 
sane, have a stealthy preference for the hussar style of 
love-making. 

Etiquette had prepared a bed for Maria at the Chan- 
cellor's, and one for Napoleon at the palace. Etiquette 
insisted that this separation was decorous, was most essen- 
tial, was demanded by precedent and custom. " Not so," 



460 NAPOLEON chap. 

maintained Napoleon ; " Henry IV. breached the custom, 
and so will I." 

Had not the marriage already taken place in Vienna ? 
If that ceremony, solemnized by the Archbishop of 
Vienna was valid, were not Napoleon and Maria man 
and wife ? Why, then, separate apartments ? He decided 
that a husband's rights were already his, and Maria made 
no strenuous objection, — so well had she been tutored in 
Vienna. Read what the imperial valet-de-ehambre, Con- 
stant, writes : — 

" The next morning at his toilet the Emperor asked me 
if any one had noticed his change of the programme." Con- 
stant lied, like a good servant, and " I told him, no." At 
that moment entered one of the Emperor's intimates who 
was unmarried. Pinching his ears, his Majesty said to him : 
" Marry a German, my dear fellow. They are the best 
women in the world : gentle, good, artless and as fresh as 
roses." And Constant states that Napoleon " was charm- 
ingly gay all the remainder of the day." 
■ With imperial pomp the civil and religious marriage 
was solemnized at St. Cloud and Paris, April 1 and 2, 
1810. The illuminations, the processions, the festivities, 
were gorgeous beyond description. After these were 
ended, there was a grand tour of the provinces by the 
imperial couple. Returning to Paris, the Austrian am- 
bassador, Prince Schwarzenberg, tendered them the mag- 
nificent fete during which the tapestries in the vast 
temporary ballroom caught on fire, the building burned 
to the ground, and some of the revellers met fiery 
death. 

As to Maria Louisa it may be said, once for all, that 
she was a commonplace woman, with no talent, no charac- 




MARIA LOUISA 
From the portrait by G6raxd in the Louvre 



xxxiT THE DIVORCE 461 

ter, no graces of manner, and no beauty. She was strong, 
healthy, physically fresh and buxom, therefore admirably 
suited to Napoleon's immediate purpose. She was never 
a companion to him, never had any influence over him, 
never had any love for him, never understood or appre- 
ciated him. Dull, indolent, sensual, capable of no warm 
attachment, she simply yielded to her father's policy, mar- 
ried where she was told to marry, obeyed Napoleon as 
she was told to obey him, accepted his caresses, ate four 
or five times per day, bore him a child, pleaded her health 
against the bearing of more, gave herself little concern 
about his reverses, left him when her father called for her 
to leave him, took up with another man whom her father 
selected, lived with him in much contentment, and bore 
him several children. 



Increasingly heavy became to Napoleon the burden of 
his family. Joseph in Spain required huge armies and 
huge subsidies to uphold him there, and his correspond- 
ence with his brother was one long, lugubrious howl for 
"more." Jerome's reckless dissipations and extravagance 
in Westphalia scandalized Germany, bringing reproach 
upon the Empire. Lucien contributed his share of mis- 
chief by encouraging the ill-temper of the Pope. Pauline, 
Caroline, Elisa were so many thorns in the flesh, so many 
annoyances more or less acute. Brother-in-law Murat, by 
his pride and boasting and complaints, disgusted friends of 
the Emperor, arousing jealousies among old comrades who 
had not been made kings. Mother Letitia, like the mother 
of Washington, complained that the illustrious son had 
not done enough for the author of his being. Uncle 



462 NAPOLEON chap. 

Fesch, now a cardinal, had absorbed all the essence of his 
clerical order, and maddened his nephew by opposition in 
the quarrel with Rome. 

And to cap a climax and advertise family feuds to the 
world, Louis Bonaparte vacated the throne of Holland, 
left the country privately, and went, almost as a fugitive, 
to " drink the waters " at Teplitz in Bohemia. For some 
days it was not even known what had become of him. 

The Emperor's grief, anger, and mortification were ex- 
treme. Stunned by the blow dealt him by his brother, h« 
said in broken voice : " To think that Louis should make 
me this return ! When I was a poor lieutenant of artil- 
lery, I divided my slender pay with him, fed him, taught 
him as though he were my son." And this cross-grained, 
thankless Louis had brought shame upon Emperor and 
Empire ! Why ? Because the brother who had put the 
sceptre in his hand wished him to rule Holland as a 
province of the Empire, in line with the policy of the 
Empire, sharing all the benefits of the Empire, and sharing 
likewise its burdens ! Because Napoleon would not 
consent that Holland should violate the Continental 
system, and become practically the ally of England in 
the great struggle for national supremacy, Louis had 
dropped the crown and gone away to drink mineral water 
in Bohemia. 

A very aggravating mortal must have been this Louis, 
on general principles. Yielding to his brother's influence, 
he had wedded Hortense, the daughter of Josephine. 
There was no love prior to this marriage, and none 
afterward. Despite Napoleon's repeated, patient efforts, 
the two could never harmonize. With or without reason, 
Louis suspected the virtue of his wife. Ugly rumor re- 



XXXIV THE DIVOECE 463 

ported that the first child of Hortense was not begotten 
by Louis, but by Napoleon. The younger brother may 
not have believed the story, but the fondness of the 
childless elder brother for the son of the younger, at- 
tracted attention and excited remark. The child was a 
promising boy; he was named after his uncle Napoleon, 
and he was devotedly fond of this uncle. The little 
fellow would come into Napoleon's room, put on the 
Emperor's hat, catch up his sword, put the belt over his 
shoulders, and, whistling a military air, go marching about 
in military style, with the sword dragging along on the 
floor. And Napoleon would be thrown into ecstasy, and 
would cry out, rubbing his hands : " Look at him ! See the 
pretty picture ! " 

His love for the boy growing with the boy's growth, 
Napoleon had offered to make him King of Italy, prepar- 
atory, doubtless, to adopting him as heir to the Empire. 
Louis would not hear of it. Put his son above him? 
Give his child a throne, when he himself had none ? Never 
in the world ! So he objected flatly, saying to his brother 
with unparalleled impudence, " Such a favor from you to 
this child would revive the rumors that you are his father." 

Is it any wonder that Napoleon's temper escaped con- 
trol, and that he caught Louis about the body and flung 
him out at the door ? 

The little Napoleon had died, Hortense had separated 
from her impossible spouse, and was going a rapid pace of 
her own, with a certain Due de Flahaut, famous for his 
shapely legs, — so much so that they wrung from the 
Emperor an exclamation on the subject of Flahaut and 
"his eternal legs." Holland's throne was vacant : what 
was Napoleon to do ? Give it to some one else who 



4U NAPOLEON 



would be as ungrateful as Louis had been? Abandon 
it entirely, and see England get a foothold there? 

To escape the dilemma, Holland was annexed to the 
Empire (July, 1810). 



The royal line of Sweden was about to become extinct. 
It became necessary to provide for the succession. The 
Swedes decided to choose a Crown Prince from among 
the illustrious Frenchmen who stood around Napoleon's 
throne. They wished to win Napoleon's good-will and 
protection by selecting one of his favorites, and they were 
made to believe that they could not please him better than 
by the choice of Bernadotte. 

Were not this a matter so gravely serious, it would be 
comical to the last degree. The marshal whom Napoleon 
most detested and distrusted was Bernadotte. The mar- 
shal who most envied the Emperor, most hated him, most 
longed to betray him, was Bernadotte. He had plotted 
against his chief during the Consulate, and escaped court- 
martial because he and Joseph Bonaparte had married 
sisters. He had left Davoust in the lurch at Auerstadt, 
imperilled the army, coldly leaving thirty thousand 
French to combat sixty thousand Prussians, without lift- 
ing a hand to help the French. Again he had escaped ; 
he was a member of the Bonaparte family. 

At Wagram his conduct had been so darkly suspicious, 
his proclamation claiming a victory where he had failed 
miserably to do his duty, had been so insolent, that 
Napoleon ordered him home in disgrace. But again 
family influence prevailed, and he was made Governor of 
Rome. 



XXXIV THE DIVORCE 46b 

The Swedes had not kept the run of these events, and 
when Bernadotte's agents plied them with the argument 
that he was a member of the Bonaparte family, and a fa- 
vorite with the Emperor, there were none to deny. Na- 
poleon knew what was going on. He alone could have 
set the Swedes right, and nipped the intrigue in the bud. 
Why did he not do so ? Absolutely no satisfactory an- 
swer can be given. A word from him would have made 
some other man Prince Royal of Sweden, but he would 
not speak. With apathetic scorn he looked on while 
Bernadotte worked the wires, feeling all the while that 
Bernadotte's success would be a misfortune to France. 
He not only refused to interfere, not only refused to cor- 
rect the false representations upon which the Swedes 
acted, but gave his formal consent when it was asked, and 
furnished Bernadotte with 1400,000 to equip himself in a 
suitable way in setting out to take possession of his new 
dignity. 



Some months after Napoleon's second marriage, he and 
the Empress stood sponsors at the baptism of several 
infants of his great officers. When the baptismal cere- 
mony had been finished, the Emperor turned to some of 
his intimate friends and said rubbing his hands together 
as he did when well pleased, " Before long, gentlemen, I 
hope we shall have another baby to baptize." 

This joyful intelligence gradually spreading, the whole 
French nation began to look forward with a feeling of 
hope and satisfaction to the birth of Napoleon's heir. 

On March 19, 1811, the Empress felt the first pains, and 

"the palace was in a flutter." Next morning early the 
2h 



466 NAPOLEON chap. 

crisis came. Napoleon sprang out of his bath, and cov- 
ered with a dressing-gown hastened to his wife's room, 
saying to the excited doctor in charge, " Come, now, Du- 
bois, don't lose your head." He embraced the suffering 
Empress tenderly, but, unable to endure the sight of her 
anguish, went to another room, where he stood, pale and 
trembling, awaiting the event. When the physician re- 
ported that an operation might be necessary, and that one 
or the other, mother or child, might have to be sacrificed 
Napoleon answered, without hesitation, " Save the mother, 
it is her right." 

To calm them, he said : " Forget that you are operating 
upon an Empress. Treat her as though she were some 
shopkeeper's wife." 

At length the cruel ordeal was over, the child safely 
delivered, and the mother relieved. The Emperor sprang 
to her couch and covered her with caresses. He was 
overwhelmed with joy ; his face shone with delight. 
" Well, Constant, we have a big boy ! " he cried to his 
valet ; and to all others as he met them he continued to 
repeat rapturously, " We have a big boy ! " Very, very 
human was this " Corsican ogre," Napoleon Bonaparte. 

If words and looks go for evidence, the warrior of 
Austerlitz, the giver of crowns and kingdoms, was never 
so happy as when he took his son in his arms, kissed it 
tenderly, and holding it toward his courtiers, said 
proudly, " Gentlemen, the King of Rome ! " 

All Paris listened, eagerly attentive, to the great bells 
of Notre Dame ; steeple answered steeple, until every 
church had joined in the chorus. All Paris hearkened 
to the cannon, counting report after report : for if the 
child were a girl, the shots would stop at twenty-one ; if 



XXXIV THE DIVORCE 467 

a boy, there would be one hundred. At the sound of the 
twenty-second gun there burst out a universal shout of 
joy and congratulation. " Hats flew up into the air, 
people ran to meet entire strangers, and with mutual 
embraces shouted. Long live the Emperor! Old soldiers 
shed tears of joy." 

Behind a curtain at the window of the palace stood 
Napoleon, looking out upon this display of enthusiastic 
gladness. " His eyes swam with tears, and he came in 
that condition to kiss his son." 

Never were national rejoicings greater at the birth of 
an heir to the throne. Cities, towns, private dwellings, 
illuminated not only in France, but throughout the 
Empire. Couriers rode with the news to foreign courts. 
Congratulations poured into the Tuileries from the four 
quarters of the earth. The Emperor seemed to be " walk- 
ing in the midst of a delicious dream." He was the 
mightiest monarch of earth ; his wife " a daughter of the 
Csesars" ; his son, his long-yearned-for son, had come, 
was strong and fair, — the " King of Rome ! " Napo- 
leon's imagination was aflame ; human grandeur he had 
pushed to its limit. 

His memory may have swept back to far-off Corsica, 
and to that day of 1769 when his mother had brought 
him into the world, lying on the floor " upon a wretched 
rug." From that dim period to this, what a march on- 
ward ! 

If Napoleon had been kind and indulgent to the 
barren Josephine, what was his tenderness to the fruit- 
ful Maria ! He almost smothered her with caresses, and 
almost, if not quite, wearied her with attentions. As to 
his boy, nothing could have been more touching than his 



468 NAPOLEON chap. 

boundless pride in him, his infinite patience with him, 
his intense paternal fondness for him. 

Nothing would satisfy the Emperor but that Josephine 
must see his boy. Maria must not know ; Maria being 
jealous of the ex-Empress. One day Napoleon had his 
child carried privately out to Bagatelle. Josephine was 
there. The little King of Rome was presented to her. 
Was she envious and jealous ? Not so. She took the child 
in her arms, pressed it, kissed it, wept over it, prattled 
"baby talk" to it, fondling it with "unutterable ten- 
derness " as though it were her own. Poor Josephine I 
Sternly truthful historians have told us about the infideli- 
ties and the want of honesty and scruple. With pain and 
sorrow we must tell the story of these as it is told to us ; 
but let us turn the picture as quickly as we may, and 
look upon the other side — for there is another and a 
brighter. 

It was true womanhood at its best when the barren, 
discarded wife continued to love the husband who had 
put her away ; who loved and fondled the offspring of the 
other marriage with a greater tenderness than the child's 
own mother ever showed it ; who remained faithful to 
Napoleon in the dark days when the second wife was 
false ; who grieved brokenly over his fall, and wished to 
share his exile. 

Evermore will this record speak for Josephine ; ever- 
more will it speak for Napoleon also. 

Constant relates : " One day when Bonaparte came 
back very much fatigued from hunting, he sent to ask 
Maria Louisa to come and see him. She came. The Em- 
peror took her in his arras and gave her a hearty kiss on 
the cheek, Maria took her handkerchief and wiped it off. 



XXXIV THE DIVORCE 469 

" ' Well, Louise,' said the Emperor, ' so I disgust thee ? ' 
" ' No,' replied the Empress, ' I have a habit of wiping 

myself like that. I do the same with the King of Rome.' 

The Emperor seemed dissatisfied." 

A wife and mother wiping off the kisses of husband and 

child reveals her own character so fully by the act that 

comment is unnecessary. 



CHAPTER XXXV 

" IVT^ taskmaster has no bowels ; it is the nature of 
things." This remark, made by Napoleon long prior 
to the divorce, was now to be verified with results calami- 
tous to Europe and to himself. The war of 1812 was one 
for which he had no enthusiasm, and into which he was 
drawn by almost irresistible circumstances. To Metter- 
nich he said, " I shall have war with Russia on grounds 
which lie beyond human possibilities, because they are 
rooted in the case itself." 

The French Emperor felt himself committed to his 
Continental system. His pride, his pledge, his self-pres- 
ervation, were at stake. As long as England could make 
war upon him, and league against him the kings and 
cabinets of the Continent, his empire would never be 
secure. He might weather the storm for his own life ; 
but the same endless antagonism, the same implacable 
hatred, would pursue his successor. To steady his throne, 
he must have peace with Great Britain : this peace he 
could not get till he conquered it ; having no navy, he 
could only " conquer the sea on the land," and his only 
hope of doing this was to make good the Continental boy-i 
cott against English manufactures. If he could close all 
Continental ports to British goods, he would starve Eng- 
land into peace. But as long as Continental ports were 

470 



CHAP. XXXV MOSCOW 471 

but partially closed, his policy would be a failure. Com- 
mand of the seaboard was his great aim, hence the inva- 
sion of Spain and Portugal, the annexation of Holland, 
the Illyrian provinces, and the Duchy of Oldenberg. 

The motive of Napoleon in granting Alexander such 
liberal terms at Tilsit was to get another adherent to the 
Continental system. The Czar took the benefits of the 
treaty and shirked its burdens. His cooperation with 
Napoleon in the war of 1809 was nothing less than a 
mockery, and when the Russian landlords clamored 
against the Continental system, Alexander began to relax 
it. When the Emperor complained of this violation of 
the treaty, the Czar retorted that Napoleon himself did 
not enforce his system, that he licensed violations of it — 
a retort in which there was truth enough to sting. 

By a vast system of smuggling, misuse of the neutral 
flag, and the forging of neutral papers, English goods 
continued to pour into the Continent. Unless Napoleon 
could put a stop to this, he might as well give up the 
contest. In October, 1810, he wrote to the Czar urging 
him to seize these so-called neutral ships, alleging that 
they were English. " Whatever papers they carry, your 
Majesty may be sure they are English." It is now ad- 
mitted that this statement of the Emperor was substan- 
tially correct. The Czar refused, and, to make his refusal 
the more galling, he issued a ukase, allowing the admission 
of colonial goods while it virtually prohibited French wines 
and silks. A plainer declaration of commercial war he 
could not have made. That it would lead to a clash of 
arms, he must have known. At any rate the Czar's entire 
line of conduct from 1810 was that of a monarch prepar- 
ing for a great war. It was in 1810 he sounded the Poles, 



472 NAPOLEON chap. 

seeking to know whether they would side with Russia in 
a contest with Napoleon. His armies were increased, his 
fortresses strengthened, and he made secret approaches 
to England and to Austria. 

In addition to the Continental system there were other 
grievances. Napoleon had added Galicia to the Grand 
Duchy of Warsaw, after the Treaty of Vienna in 1809, in 
violation of his agreement with the Czar. He had taken 
possession of Oldenberg, whose Duke had married a sister 
of the Czar. In each of these cases the Emperor had 
offered explanations, and he had offered an equivalent in 
Germany for Oldenberg ; but the transactions themselves 
rankled in the Russian memory — although she had really 
no right to object to Napoleon's treatment of Oldenberg 
which was a member of his Confederation of the Rhine ; 
and although she had accepted at his hands a valuable 
increase of territory as the price of her lukewarm support 
in the war of 1809. 

In the matter of the marriage, there had been irrita- 
tion. Napoleon suspecting that Alexander meant to pro- 
crastinate and then refuse, while the Czar believed that 
the Emperor was wooing two princesses at the same time, 
and coolly balancing the Russian against the Austrian. 
This was not the truth, but was near it. A Napoleonic 
family council had debated the two alliances, upon the 
assumption that the Emperor could choose either, and 
had decided in favor of the Hapsburg. Alexander, the 
Romanoff, therefore felt insulted. In fact, after this 
second marriage of Napoleon, the Czar had believed that 
war was inevitable. Nevertheless, the fault even here 
was with the Czar. Napoleon had asked for his sister, 
and was entitled to a positive answer. Indefinite ad- 



XXXV MOSCOW 473 

journment, without a promise, was, to a man in Napoleon's 
position, a polite way of refusing. 

Still there was no rupture. Diplomatic relations were 
strained, war began to be talked of, preparations got 
under way, but diplomacy yet hoped to solve the problem. 
The final quarrel seems to have taken place over the 
wording of a new treaty. Alexander wanted Napoleon 
to say that "Poland shall never be restored." How 
could the Emperor guarantee such a thing ? He was not 
Destiny. He could not foresee what might be done by 
others and by Time. He was willing to promise that he 
would never restore Poland, nor aid in its restoration. 
He wrote this promise in the strongest terms. The Czar 
struck out the amendment, rewrote the original, " Poland 
shall never be restored," and demanded Napoleon's 
signature. 

Was this an affront, or not? There the case, so far as 
the actual rupture goes, rests. Napoleon considered it a 
humiliation to sign such an indefinite, peremptory guar- 
antee ; he thought it an insult for the Czar to show so 
plainly that he doubted his word. 

England, of course, was buzzing at the Russian ear all 
this while. Her agents moved heaven and earth to make 
the " two bullies " fight. No matter which was worsted. 
Great Britain would be the gainer. She feared France 
on the Continent, Russia on the Indian frontier. A duel 
between these colossal powers would exhaust both, leaving 
England all the stronger by comparison. 

Russia and Turkey were at war on the Danube. The 
Christians were doing their utmost to relieve the heathen 
of several thousand square miles of land. England ex- 
erted herself to bring about peace between Turk and 



474 NAPOLEON chap. 

Russian, in order that the Czar might not have a war in 
his rear as Napoleon had in Spain. 

It is said that a forged letter, in which Napoleon was 
made to state that he agreed to a partition of Turkey, was 
shown at Constantinople. The Turk had his suspicions of 
this letter ; but an Englishman swore that he recognized 
Napoleon's writing. By some strange neglect, France 
had no ambassador in Turkey at this critical moment. 
Andreossy had been appointed, had set out, but had 
waited at Laybach for his credentials. When they at 
length arrived, and he proceeded to Constantinople, it 
was too late. 

Before any declaration of war, and while diplomatic 
relations were still maintained by the two governments, 
the Czar sent an agent to Paris to pose as envoy and to 
work as spy. This, man, Czernischeff, bribed a clerk in 
the French war office to steal a complete statement of the 
French forces, dispositions, equipments, etc. The clerk 
was shot ; the noble Russian escaped by sudden, secret, 
and rapid flight. 

At practically the same time. Napoleon was equally 
well served at St. Petersburg by a spy who stole the 
" states " of the Russian armies, and the plates from 
which the great maps of Russia were printed. From 
these plates Napoleon furnished his generals with maps 
for the Russian campaign. 

Napoleon fully realized the nature of the task he had 
before him in a contest with Russia. To defend himself 
in Italy, Germany, or even Poland against the Czar was 
one thing ; to invade that vast empire with the purpose 
of seizing its capital and compelling it to sign such trea- 
ties as he had imposed upon Austria and Prussia, was 



TTTv MOSCOW 476 

another task altogether — a task colossal, if not appalling. 
No one knew this better than Napoleon, and his prepara- 
tions were made on a scale such as Europe had never 
seen. 

In advance of the work of the soldier came that of the 
diplomat. Both Russia and France sought alliances. 
Great Britain was, of course, heartily with the Czar. 
Sweden, controlled by Bernadotte, took the same side. 
He had demanded, as the price of his alliance, that Napo- 
leon give him Norway, thus despoiling the Danes. The 
Emperor refused, but offered Finland, which Russia had 
seized. The Czar promised Norway, and thus the French- 
man, Bernadotte, who probably had not yet spent all the 
money Napoleon had supplied him with when he went to 
Sweden, pledged his support to the enemies of France. 
For all practical purposes, Russia likewise made an ally 
of Turkey. So utterly improbable did it seem that 
Turkey would make peace with its hereditary enemy at 
the very moment when it had the best opportunity fate 
had ever offered in all the long struggle, that Napoleon 
had not even calculated upon such an event. It took him 
completely by surprise. 

Turkish recollections of Tilsit and Erfurth, Turkish 
fears of other bargains of the same sort, and Turkish 
dread of an English bombardment of Constantinople, 
which was threatened, brought about the unlooked-for 
treaty which gave Russia an army to throw upon Napo- 
leon's flank. 

In addition to these advantages the Czar had another, 
and of vast importance — the war in Spain. Three hun- 
dred thousand French troops were held in the peninsula, 
and scores of the best officers the Empire could boast. 



476 NAPOLEON chap. 

To Alexander it must have seemed that it would indeed 
be a miracle if Napoleon could sustain two such immense 
contests so far apart, one at the extreme south the other 
in the extreme north. Even Napoleon had appeared to 
grow weary of his huge tasks, and had been heard to say, 
"The bow is overbent." 

But in getting ready for the contest he certainly accom- 
plished wonders. So imposing were his armaments that 
Austria and Prussia both believed he would succeed, and 
they cast in their lot with the French. Each agreed to 
furnish contingents : the Emperor Francis assured his 
son-in-law that he might " fully rely upon Austria for the 
triumph of the common cause," and the King of Prussia 
pledged his "unswerving fidelity." Upon these broken 
reeds the astute Emperor did not, in all probability, intend 
to lean very heavily. Events were soon to prove that 
they would bear no weight at all. 

Before putting himself at the head of his army. Napoleon 
held a grand assemblage of his allies at Dresden (May, 
1812). It was the most imposing, as it was the last, of 
the Napoleonic pageants, wherein vassal princes gathered 
about him and did him homage. Accompanied by the Em- 
press Maria Louisa, he left St. Cloud May 9, reached 
Mayence on the 14th, and from thence made a triumphal 
progress to the Saxon capital. Princes of the Confedera- 
tion of the Rhine hastened to receive their suzerain ; 
" many even came to wait for them on the road, amongst 
others the King of Wiirtemberg and the Grand Duke of 
Baden." The King and Queen of Saxony came forth 
from Dresden to meet them ; and a torchlight procession 
escorted them into the city. On the morrow came the 
Emperor and Empress of Austria, and the archdukes; 



XXXV MOSCOW 477 

following these came the King and Crown Prince of 
Prussia, the Queen of Westphalia, and scores of princes, 
noblemen, and dignitaries. " The splendor of the Court," 
says an eye-witness, " gave Napoleon the air of some 
legendary Grand Mogul, As at Tilsit, he showered mag- 
nificent presents on all sides. At his levees, reigning 
princes danced attendance for hours in the hope of being 
honored with an audience. Every country sent its con- 
tingent. There were no eyes but for Napoleon. The 
populace gathered in crowds outside the palaces, following 
his every movement, and dogging his progress through 
the streets, in hourly expectation of some great event." 

The Crown Prince of Prussia begged for the privilege 
of serving on the Emperor's staff, and was denied. Napo- 
leon doubtless thought the campaign before him was 
risky enough without the presence of a possible spy in his 
military family. 

Napoleon was no longer the man he had been in his 
earlier campaigns. He had grown fat, subject to fits of 
lassitude, and to a painful disease, dysuria. His plans 
were as fine as ever, but the execution was nothing like 
what it had been. He no longer gave such personal 
attention to detail ; irresolution sometimes paralyzed his 
combinations. 

Nor were his generals up to their former standard. He 
had made them too rich. They had pampered themselves 
and grown lazy. They had no stomach for the Russian 
war, joined their commands reluctantly, and worked with- 
out zeal. Neither was the army to be compared to those 
of Austerlitz, Jena, and Wagram. In his host of six hun- 
dred thousand, there were but two hundred thousand 
Frenchmen, the remainder being composed of Germans 



478 NAPOLEON chap. 

from the Confederation of the Rhine, Prussians, Austrians, 
Italians, Poles, Swiss, Dutch, and even Spaniards and 
Portuguese. In such a motley array there could be no 
cohesion, no strength of common purpose which could 
stand a serious strain. Even the French soldiers, splendid 
as they undoubtedly were, were not animated by the same 
spirit as formerly. The causes of the war were beyond 
their grasp, even the generals felt that the Continental 
system was not worth fighting about. England, on the 
verge of commercial ruin, might know better : Napoleon 
certainly knew better ; but to the average Frenchman the 
grievances on both sides were too vague and abstract to 
justify so huge a conflict. 

No declaration of war had been published, neither 
Czar nor Emperor had yet fully committed himself, and 
hopes were entertained that even yet terms might be ar- 
ranged. But when the travel-stained carriage of Count 
Narbonne rolled into Dresden, and he announced that 
Alexander had refused to make any change in his atti- 
tude, it became with Napoleon a question of back down 
or fight. The Czar was determined not to begin the war ; 
he was equally determined not to keep the contract made 
at Tilsit. Just as England had held Malta after pledging 
herself to give it up, Russia was resolved to repudiate and 
oppose the Continental system which she had promised to 
support. 

At St. Helena Napoleon said that he and Alexander 
were like two bullies, each trying to frighten the other, 
and neither wishing to fight. From the manner in which 
Napoleon continued to hesitate and to send messengers, 
after all his preparations were complete, it would seem 
that he, at least, had hoped to the last that an accom- 



XXXV MOSCOW 479 

raodation might be reached. Narbonne's report put an 
end to doubt. 

Either Alexander's breach of the Continental system 
must be borne, to the ruin of Napoleon's whole policy, or 
there must be war. The Emperor had gone too far to 
stop. What would the world say if, after having made 
such gigantic preparations, he abandoned the enterprise 
without having extorted a single concession ? The very 
" nature of things " drove him on, and, dismissing the Dres- 
den conference, he put his host in motion for the Niemen. 

Says General Marbot : " When the sun rose on June 24 
we witnessed a most imposing spectacle. On the highest 
point near the left bank were seen the Emperor's tents. 
Around them the slopes of every hill, and the valleys be- 
tween, were gay with men and horses flashing with arms." 
Amid strains of music from the military bands, the eagles 
were borne forward, and, under the eye of the master, a 
quarter of a million soldiers began to tramp over the 
bridges, shouting, " Live the Emperor ! " Soon Napoleon 
himself crossed the bridge, and galloped through the 
forest at full speed on his Arab, as though it exhilarated 
him to be upon Russian soil. 

The Russians made no attempt to check the invaders. 
Deceived as to Napoleon's plan of campaign, their armies 
were scattered, and soon became involved in the gravest 
peril. Had it not been for the terrible blunders of Jerome 
Bonaparte and Junot, the Russian force under Barclay de 
Tolly must have been cut off and destroyed. Had this 
been done, it might, like Ulm, have proved decisive. But 
Napoleon found it impossible to perfect his combinations : 
the Russian armies escaped, united, and the long campaign 
began. 



480 NAPOLEON chai. 

Crops had failed in this part of Russia the year be- 
fore, and the land was scantily supplied with provisions. 
The troops of the Czar laid waste the country as they 
retreated ; hence the invaders almost immediately began 
to suffer, for their commissariat could not sustain so tre- 
mendous a burden as the feeding of the half million men 
and one hundred thousand horses. The summer heat 
was stifling. Men and horses sank under it. One writer 
gives us a picture of Napoleon himself, stripped to his 
shirt and lying across a bed, panting and inert with heat. 
Torrents of rain followed. The roads were cut up, becom- 
ing mere sinks of mud. Desertions, straggling, mortali- 
ties, marauding, became frightful, so much so that an 
officer who came up with reserves stated that the route 
over which the Grand Array had passed looked like that 
of a defeated foe. Ten thousand horses died for want of 
forage between the Niemen and Wilna. After the floods 
came sultry weather again and the suffocating dust of the 
roads. The hospitals were crowded with the sick. Disci- 
pline was lax, movements slow and uncertain. There was 
a babel of languages, growing confusion, quarrels among 
officers, and much vacillation in the Emperor himself. 

At Wilna the Polish question faced him again. Once 
more he temporized. He had mortally offended the Czar 
by enlarging the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, perpetually 
menacing Russia with a resurrected and vengeful Poland. 
He now froze the ardor of the Poles by indefinitely post- 
poning the day of their deliverance. When he afterward 
realized how tremendously effective a united Poland 
would have been in the death struggle with the Czar, 
he must have inwardly cursed the bonds which tied his 
hands — the alliances with Prussia and Austria. Very 



ixxv MOSCOW 481 

frankly, very honorably, he told the Polish delegation 
that his engagements with these two powers made it 
impossible for him to reestablish their national inde- 
pendence. 

While at Wilna Napoleon received an envoy from the 
Czar, who proposed that if the French would recross the 
Niemen, terms of peace might be agreed on. Such an 
offer seemed to be altogether one-sided, giving substantial 
advantages to Alexander, and assuring nothing to Napo- 
leon. Therefore it was rejected. 

After having lingered at Wilna from June 28 to July 
16, a loss of time which Lord Wolseley thinks " it is im- 
possible to explain away when we remember how late 
it was in the year when he opened the campaign," the 
Emperor marched upon Vitebsk. It was here that he 
learned that Russia had come to terms with Sweden and 
Turkey. 

It was at this place that, according to Segur, the Em- 
peror exclaimed, " Here I am, and here I will stay," 
taking off his sword and throwing it upon the table. He 
had pursued the Russians some distance beyond the town, 
had failed to force them into a pitched battle, and had 
now returned to headquarters. "I will stay here for 
the winter, complete my army, give it a rest, and organize 
Poland. The campaign of 1812 is at an end." Turning 
to the King of Naples, he continued : " Murat, the first 
Russian campaign is over. We will plant our standards 
here. We will intrench and quarter the troops. The 
year 1813 will see us in Moscow ; 1814 in St. Peters- 
burg — the war with Russia is one of three years !" 

But he soon became irresolute. The thought of eight 
months of inaction, with the Grand Army on the defensive, 

2i 



482 NAPOLEON chap. 

became unbearable. What would the world say ? " Eu- 
rope will say, ' He stayed at Vitebsk because he dared not 
advance.' Am I to give Russia time to arm? How can 
we go into winter quarters in July ? Let us forestall the 
winter ! Peace is at Moscow. Why should we remain 
here eight months, idle and exposed to treacherous in- 
trigues in the rear, when we can reach our goal in twenty 
days?" 

He did not convince his marshals ; they opposed the 
advance ; but he angrily swept their objections aside. 

To Duroc he said he would go to Smolensk and there 
winter. Complaining that his generals were sick of war, 
that he had made them too rich, that they could think of 
nothing but the pleasures of the chase on their estates, 
and the display of themselves in fine carriages in Paris, 
he ordered the advance upon Smolensk. Once more he 
failed to secure his much-desired pitched battle. The 
Russians fought his advance guard stubbornly, and in- 
flicted heavy losses, but during the night they continued 
their retreat. The French found Smolensk a heap of smok- 
ing ruins ; French shells and Russian patriots had fired it. 

Much has been said about the alleged plan of Russia to 
lure Napoleon into the country and to destroy him by 
starvation. The fact seems to be that the Russians retreated 
because they could not help it. They fought often and 
desperately. The Czar himself came to the army for the 
express purpose of inspiring it to fight. Outnumbered 
and beaten, it fell back, desolating the country as it went ; 
but the plain facts show that the Russians did all that was 
in their power to put a stop to the invasion. The alleged 
campaign policy of " luring Napoleon to his doom " is 
fiction. 



XXXV MOSCOW 483 

At Smolensk, Napoleon was no more willing to stop 
than he had been at Vitebsk. Peace was at Moscow ; he 
must press on ; he must beat the enemy in a great pitched 
battle, and give his friend, the Czar, the excuse to his 
people without which he would not dare to come to terms. 
Again there were hot words between the Emperor and 
his marshals. Murat, in great anger, predicted that if 
the army was forced on to Moscow, it would be lost. But 
the order was imperative : " On to Moscow ! " — and the 
army marched. 

The Czar, or those who controlled him, were dissatisfied 
with the manner in which their side of the campaign had 
been conducted. There had been too much retreat, and 
not enough fight. Kutusoff was put in command with 
the understanding that he must give battle — a fact which, 
of itself, would seem to dispose of the theory that Napo- 
leon was " lured " into the interior as a matter of policy. 

At Borodino the Russians barred the road to " Mother 
Moscow " : and here the pitched battle was fought. With 
a cannonade that was heard for eighty miles, a quarter of 
a million men here butchered each other all day long on 
September 7, until seventy thousand lay dead or wounded. 
Night ended the carnage, and next morning the Russians 
were again in retreat. 

During this famous battle, Napoleon remained sitting, 
or slowly walking up and down at one place, where he 
received reports and sent orders. He spoke but little, and 
seemed ill. In fact, he was a sick man, suffering with a 
severe cold and with his bladder complaint. He showed 
no activity, and left the battle to his marshals. At three 
in the afternoon the Russians had put in their last 
reserves, and were in distress everywhere — driven from 



484 NAPOLEON chap. 

their intrenchment, and threatened with ruin should the 
French reserves now attack. Ney, Murat, Davoust, all 
clamored for the Guard, the Emperor's reserve. He hesi- 
tated. They sent again, and still he wavered. " Sire ! " 
said Bessieres, commander of the Guard, " remember that 
you are eight hundred leagues from your capital." Napo- 
leon refused the Guard. Ney was amazed, furious : 
" What does this mean ? What is the Emperor doing in the 
rear ? If he is tired of fighting, let him go back to his 
d — d Tuileries, and leave us to do what is necessary ! " 

Thus the Guard never fired a shot, the battle remained 
unfinished, and the Russians retired in good order, when 
they might have been destroyed. Military critics say 
that the Emperor made two capital blunders at Borodino : 
first, in vetoing Davoust's offer to turn the Russian flank 
and come upon their rear; and, second, in not using his 
reserves. 

That night the Emperor tried to dictate orders, but 
could not. He was too hoarse to talk. He was obliged 
to write ; and he fell to it, writing rapidly, and throwing 
the scraps of paper on the table. Secretaries deciphered 
these scrawls slowly, and copied them, as fast as they 
could. As the papers accumulated. Napoleon would rap 
on his table for the secretaries to remove them. For 
twelve hours he labored, not a sound to be heard save 
the scratching of Napoleon's pen and the rapping of his 
hammer. 

The French continued their march onward, and at last 
neared Moscow. Napoleon left his carriage, mounted his 
horse, and rode forward. " In the distance could be seen 
the long columns of Russian cavalry retiring in good 
order before the French troops." The French marched 



xxxT MOSCOW 485 

on, and at last Moscow was in sight. It was a proud 
moment for Napoleon when he stood on Pilgrim's Hill, 
surrounded by a brilliant staff, and gazed upon the 
towers, the golden domes of the vast city, while his 
lieutenants and his troops shouted, in wild enthusiasm, 
" Moscow ! Moscow ! " 

The Emperor was heard to mutter, " It was time." 
Apparently his greatest enterprise had been crowned 
with success. His long triumphant march toward 
Asia would rank with Alexander's. Russia would now 
sue for peace, terms would be easily arranged. Continental 
unity would follow, and England would find herself an 
island once more — not an empire. 

But it was soon apparent that Moscow was not like 
Berlin or Vienna. Here were no crowds of spectators to 
gaze upon the victors. The streets were silent, empty. 
The houses were deserted. Here was a vast city without 
citizens. The French were dumfounded. Napoleon 
refused at first to believe: "the thing was preposterous." 
The conquerors marched through the streets, the military 
bands playing, " To us is the victory," but the vast soli- 
tude awed them as they marched. 

The sight of the Kremlin, however, gave the conqueror 
a thrill of exultation. " Here I am at last ! Here I am 
in Moscow, in the ancient palace of the Czars ! in the 
Kremlin itself!" 

Almost immediately, and in spite of all Napoleon could 
do, commenced the wholesale pillage of the city. Dis- 
cipline relaxed, and marauders stormed the vacant houses 
on the hunt for loot. In the middle of the night of 
the 16th of September, the sleeping Napoleon was roused 
and brought running to the window of the Kremlin by 



486 NAPOLEON chap. 

the cry of " Fire ! '' The flames, feeding on wooden houses 
and fanned by high winds, defied control, and struck the 
conquerors with terror. As described by Napoleon him- 
self, at St. Helena, " It was the spectacle of a sea and 
billows of fire, a sky and clouds of fire, mountains of red, 
rolling fire, like immense ocean waves, alternately bursting 
forth and lifting themselves to skies of fire, and then sink- 
ing into an ocean of fire below. Oh, it was the grandest, 
sublimest, most terrible sight the world ever saw ! " 

Russians say that the French burnt the city ; the 
French say the Russians did it. French of&cers allege 
most positively that Russian incendiaries were caught 
in the act. It is certain that numbers of persons so 
taken were shot, as a punishment. On the other hand, 
so eminent a Russian as Tolstoi maintains that the care- 
lessness of the French soldiers was the cause of the fires. 
The Russians who had burned Smolensk to deprive the 
French of its use, who made the line of their retreat a 
desert to deprive the French of supplies, were probably 
the burners of Moscow. They burnt it as they burnt 
Smolensk and every village on their line of march, as a 
war measure which would injure the invaders. The fact 
that Rostopchin, the mayor, had carried away all appli- 
ances for putting out fires, would seem to be a conclusive 
piece of circumstantial evidence. 

This awful calamity, unexpected, unexampled, upset 
Napoleon's calculations. To destroy a town like Smolensk 
was one thing, to make of Moscow, one of the great cities 
of the world, an ocean of flame, a desert of ashes, was 
quite another. It was appalling : it stupefied, benumbed, 
bewildered Napoleon as no event in his career had done. 
He realized the frightful extent of the disaster, and saw 
himself hurled from the pinnacle to the abyss. 



XXXV MOSCOW 487 

Indecision had already made sad havoc in the campaign : 
indecision now completed the ruin. Napoleon had loitered 
at Wilna eighteen days ; had halted sixteen days at 
Vitebsk. He had hesitated at Borodino, practically leav- 
ing the battle to his marshals, refusing them the reserves. 
Now at Moscow, he dawdled for five weeks, when every 
day brought nearer the march of two enemies that 
hitherto had not hindered him, — the Russian army, from 
the Danube, and Winter ! 

At the Kremlin was the most wretched man in existence. 
The Emperor had reached his Moscow only to find it a 
prison. Inexorable conditions shut him in with unpitying 
grip. He could not rest, could not sleep, would not talk, 
lingered long at table, lolled for hours on a sofa, — in 
his hand a novel which he did not read. He, the pro- 
foundest of calculators, who had from boyhood calculated 
everything, had for once miscalculated in everything. He 
had misjudged his friends and his foes ; had erred as to the 
Russian temper ; had fatally misconceived the character 
of the Czar. He knew Alexander to be weak, vain, 
vacillating ; he did not allow for the strength which 
strong advisers like Stein and Sir Robert Wilson and 
dozens of others might give to this wavering monarch. 
He had calculated upon finding peace at Moscow, and 
had not found it. He had felt assured that, at the worst, 
Moscow would furnish abundant food and excellent 
winter quarters. It did neither. At fault in so many 
matters of vital concern, the Emperor was a prey to the 
most gloomy reflections. He set up a theatre for his 
troops, but did not attend it. He rode daily through the 
streets on his little white Arab, but spoke to no one. 
Sometimes in the evening he would play a game of cards 



488 NAPOLEON char 

with Duroc. There were a few concerts at the palace ; 
some singing by Italian artists, some piano music ; but the 
Emperor listened moodily, " with heavy heart." He held 
his reviews, distributed rewards, but looked pale and stern, 
saying almost nothing. He duped himself with hopes 
of peace. He sent envoys and letters to Alexander — 
envoys who were not received, letters which were not 
answered. With an obstinacy which was fatal, he refused 
to see the truth of his situation. A lethargy, a failure of 
power to decide, mastered him. Even a light fall of snow 
was not warning sufficient to rouse him. 

" At the Kremlin," says Constant, " the days were long 
and tedious." The Emperor was waiting for the Czar's 
answer, which never came. His morbid irritability was 
stirred by the great flocks of crows and jackdaws that 
hovered about the city. " My God," he cried, " do they 
mean to follow us everywhere ! " 

On October 3 he summoned a council of his marshals 
and proposed to march upon St. Petersburg. His officers 
listened coldly, and opposed him. 

In a sort of desperation he then sent Lauriston to Kutu- 
soff to ask for an interview with Alexander, saying to his 
envoy : " I want peace ; you hear me. Get me peace. 
But save my honor if you can ! " 

The wily Kutusoff humored Lauriston, and Lauriston, 
in turn, nursed the infatuation of the Emperor. Thus 
precious days slipped away, the French were still at Mos- 
cow, winter was coming, and two other Russian armies, 
one from the north and one from the south, were march- 
ing steadily on to strike the French line of communica- 
tion. 

Napoleon wished to attack Kutusoff, drive him or de- 



xxxT MOSCOW 489 

stroy him, and then fall back on Smolensk. His officers 
counselled against this. 

« Then what am I to do ? " 

" Stay here," advised Count Daru. " Turn Moscow 
into a fortified camp, and so pass the winter. There is 
plenty of bread and salt. We can forage, we can salt 
down the horses which we cannot feed. As for cxuarters, 
if there are not houses enough here, there are plenty of 
cellars. We can hold out till spring, when our reenforce- 
ments, backed by Lithuania in arms, will come to the rescue 
and complete our success." 

" Counsel of the lion ! " exclaimed the Emperor. " But 
what will Paris say ? what will they do ? No ; France is 
not accustomed to my absence. Prussia and Austria will 
take advantage of it." 

At length a rabbit, fleeing for dear life from a Cossack, 
put an end to hesitation, and put two great armies in 
motion. 

Tolstoi relates : "On October 14 a Cossack, Shapovalof, 
while on patrol duty, shot at a rabbit, and, entering the 
woods in pursuit of the wounded animal, stumbled upon 
the unguarded left flank of Murat's army " — Napoleon's 
advance guard. 

Shapovalof, on his return to camp, told what he had 
seen, the news reached headquarters, a reconnoissance con- 
firmed the statement, and the Russians, sorely tempted, 
broke the armistice, fell upon the unwary Murat, and did 
him immense damage. But for a difference between the 
Russian generals, it appears that Murat's entire force 
might have been captured. 

The Emperor was holding a review in the courtyard oi 
the Kremlin when members of his suite began to say to 



490 NAPOLEON chap, xxxv 

one another that they heard cannon firing in the direction 
of the advance guard. At first no one dared speak of it 
to Napoleon. Duroc finally did so, and the Emperor was 
seen to be seriously disturbed. The review had not been 
recommenced before an aide-de-camp from Murat came at 
full speed to report that the truce had been broken, the 
French taken by surprise, and routed with heavy loss. 

This was October 18. At last Napoleon was a soldier 
again : the news of the battle had roused him to action. 
His decision was taken, orders flew, and before night the 
whole army was in motion. 



CHAPTER XXXVI 

Tj^NCUMBERED by a vast amount of booty, a host of 
camp-followers, and a huge train of vehicles of all 
sorts, the Grand Army left Moscow, upward of one hun- 
dred thousand strong and with some fifty thousand horses. 
Neither men nor horses had been shod for a winter cam- 
paign. The clothing worn by the troops was mostly that 
of summer. The movement of the troops was slow, be- 
cause of the enormous baggage. The Emperor wished to 
retreat by the Kalouga road which would carry him over 
a country able to support him with provisions. The Rus- 
sians barred the way, and at Malo-Yaroslavitz the French, 
under Eugene Beauharnais, attacked and beat them. Fall- 
ing back to a stronger position, the Russians still barred 
the way. Military critics say that had not Napoleon's 
retreat been so sluggish, he would have outstripped these 
Russians in their efforts to head him off. Had he burned 
all that plunder which his army was carrying away, he 
might have saved his army. 

Marshal Bessieres and others, sent forward to recon- 
noitre, reported that the enemy was too strongly in- 
trenched to be dislodged ; the army must get back to the 
old road by which it had come. Napoleon hesitated, 
listened to reports and advice, lost time, and finally gave 

491 



492 NAPOLEON chap. 

the word to retreat by the old route — a fatal decision. 
What Bessieres had seen, according to some authorities, 
was but a rear-guard : Kutusoff had retreated, and the 
new route by Kalouga could have been taken by the 
French. 

With heavy heart the Emperor led the way to the other 
road — that which had already been swept bare in the 
advance to Moscow. 

The Russians did not press the pursuit with any great 
vigor, but the Grand Army, nevertheless, melted like 
snow. Men and horses died of starvation, demoralization 
set in, bands of stragglers were cut off by Cossacks, so 
that after a battle at Wiasma, and previous to any snow 
or severe cold, only fifty -five thousand men and twelve 
thousand horses were fit for active service. 

On November 6 the weather changed, and wintry hor- 
rors accumulated. The snow, the freezing winds, the icy 
rains, the lack of food, the want of shelter, the ferocity of 
pursuing foes, the inhumanity of comrades and friends, 
the immense plains to be crossed, the deep rivers to be 
bridged, the enormous burden of despair to be borne, — 
these were the factors of the most hideous drama war ever 
presented. 

The Grand Army reeled in tattered fragments toward 
home, fighting, starving, freezing, meeting death in every 
shape known to man. The French marched in four divi- 
sions, commanded by the Emperor, Eugene, Davoust, and 
Ney. Terrible as was the daily loss by disease, death, and 
straggling, each of these divisions held its formation, and 
never failed to stand and fight when the Russians attacked. 
The unbending courage shown by these commanders, the 
steadiness of subordinate officers, the despairing gallantry 



xxxTi THE EETREAT 493 

of the remnants of the Grand Army, stand out in bold re- 
lief to the general gloom of this mightiest of shipwrecks. 
Much of the time Napoleon was on foot, clad in furs, staff 
in hand to help him through the drifts, marching stolidly, 
silently, with his men. Nothing that he could do was 
left undone ; but that which he could do had little influ- 
ence on general results as they tramped along. Until 
they reached Smolensk, he was almost as powerless as the 
others ; after that his superiority saved what was left of 
the army. 

The hardships of the retreat increased after November 
14, when Smolensk was left behind. Men fell by the road 
exhausted, men were blinded by the glare of the light on 
limitless fields of snow, men were maddened by the in- 
tolerable anxieties and woes of the march. In the day 
the ice cut their rag-covered or naked feet, the wind and 
freezing rain tortured their hungry, tattered bodies. At 
night — nights of sixteen fearful hours — bivouac fires 
were scant and insufficient, and when morning dawned, 
the circle of sleeping forms around these dismal bivouacs" 
would sometimes remain forever unbroken — the sleep of 
the soldier was the long one, the final one. 

In October the Russian prisoners had said to the 
French, "In a fortnight the nails will drop from your 
fingers ; you will not be able to hold your guns." The 
cold was even worse ; not only did nails drop off, the 
hands dropped off. The time sOon came when a benumbed 
Frenchman, who had fallen into a ditch, and who had 
piteously begged a passing comrade to lend a helping 
hand, was answered, " I haven't any ! " There were only 
the stumps of the arms ; the poor fellow's hands had been 
frozen off. " But here, catch hold of my cloak," he con- 



494 NAPOLEON chap. 

tinued, and the man in the ditch having caught hold, was 
dragged to his feet. 

Conditions like these made savages of the men. In 
the rush for food and fire and shelter, the strong tramped 
down the weak. Frantic with cold and hunger, they 
fought each other like wolves for place and provisions. 
The weaker were shut out and died. Horse-flesh was com- 
mon diet ; it is even said that cannibalism occurred. For 
warmth, artillerymen could be seen holding their hands at 
the noses of their horses ; for food, a soldier was consid- 
ered lucky who found a little flour, half dirt and chaff, 
in the cracks of a floor. But in the worst stages of this 
awful retreat there was human heroism ; there was human 
sympathy and unselfishness. There is nothing finer in 
the fine character of Eugene Beauharnais than the gal- 
lantry with which he set the good example of patience, 
courage, loyalty, and self-sacrifice. From the time he beat 
Kutusoff in the first fight after Moscow, to his taking 
the chief command, which Murat abandoned, his conduct 
was heroic. Rugged Davoust, the best of the marshals 
now serving, who would have saved his master at Boro- 
dino, and who did snatch him from the burning streets 
of Moscow, was a tower of strength after the retreat 
began. 

Other marshals did not love Davoust ; they quarrelled 
with him, said he was slow, and accused him of not main- 
taining discipline. On the retreat Ney, whom Davoust 
had left behind, charged him with something like treach- 
ery. But Napoleon knew the value of Davoust, and his- 
tory knows it. To the careful student of this eventful 
epoch the conclusion comes home, irresistibly, that Napo- 
leon might have remained till his death the mightiest 



XXXVI THE RETREAT 496 

monarch of the world had he listened to two men, — in 
civil affairs, Cambaceres ; in military matters, Daiojjst. 

As to Murat, he fought all along the front with such 
conspicuous gallantry, superbly mounted and gorgeously 
dressed, that he extorted the admiration of the Russians 
themselves. The Cossacks, especially, looked upon him 
as the bravest, the most martial of men. Murat fought 
the cavalry till the horses were all dead, and then he spent 
most of his time in Napoleon's carriage. 

But Ney, rugged, lionlike Ney, surpassed them all, 
winning in this campaign the Emperor's proud title, " The 
brave of the braves." Such grandeur of courage, such 
steadiness, such loyalty, the world never surpassed. Sepa- 
rated from Davoust, beset by overwhelming numbers, he 
seemed a lost man. The Emperor, hard pressed himself, 
but determined to make a final effort to save his marshals, 
halted at Krasnoi, facing sixty thousand Russians with six 
thousand French. Nothing in Napoleon's own career is 
finer than this. Russian shells began to fly, screaming 
through the air and along the snow. Lebrun spoke of it 
as of something unusually terrible. " Bah ! " said the 
Emperor with contempt ; " balls have been whistling about 
our legs these twenty years." His desperate courage in 
standing at bay so impressed Kutusoff that he drew back, 
and Davoust came through. But Ney was still behind, and 
in the face of the tremendous odds the French were forced 
onward. In deep grief for his marshal, the Emperor re- 
proached himself for having exposed Ney too much. From 
time to time he would inquire if any one had heard from 
him. On the 20th of November General Gourgand came in 
haste to announce that Ney was only a few leagues away 
and would soon join. With a cry of joy. Napoleon ex« 



496 NAPOLEON char 

claimed, " Is it true ? " When Gourgand explained how 
Ney had marched and fought : how he had defied a belea- 
guring host ten times his own number ; how, summoned to 
surrender, he had replied, " A marshal of France has never 
surrendered ! " and how he had, partly by stratagem, and 
partly by force, escaped with a small remnant of his com- 
mand, Napoleon was delighted. " There are 200,000,000 
francs in my vaults in the Tuileries, and I would give 
them all to have Ney at my side ! " 

When the heroic survivors of this column joined the 
"main army, there were shouts and tears of joy. 

It was Ney who held the Cossacks at bay toward the 
final stages of the retreat ; it was 'Ney who fired the last 
shot of the war as he recrossed the Niemen : it was Ney 
who became almost literally the rear-guard of the Grand 
Army. 

Well might the Bourbon Duchess of Angouleme say, in 
1815, when told the story of this man's antique heroism 
in the Russian campaign, " Had we known all that, we 
would not have had him shot ! " 

In the disorder, savagery, elemental chaos of this his- 
toric retreat, human nature flew to the extremes. There 
were soldiers who slew each other in struggles for food, 
and soldiers who risked starvation to share with others. 
In some instances comradeship was mocked, in some it 
was stronger than ever. There were instances where the 
strong laughed at the weak who pleaded for aid. There 
were cases where the strong braved all to save the weak. 
Wounded officers were seen drawn on sledges to which 
their comrades had harnessed themselves, brother officers 
taking the place of horses. A child, abandoned by its 
mother, was saved by Marshal Ney, and escaped all the 



XXXVI THE RETREAT 497 

hardships of the retreat. Another mother drowning in 
the Beresina held her babe aloft in her arms, the child 
alive, the mother as good as dead. 

One of the most touching and purely unselfish acts of 
devotion was that of the Hessian contingent in its pro- 
tection of their hereditary prince. The people of Hesse 
had little cause to reverence their rulers — petty tyrants 
who had sold them into military servitude at so much 
a head to England, and who had misgoverned them with 
the worst of feudal methods. But on the coldest night 
of the retreat, when it seemed that the young Prince 
Emil would freeze to death, the remnant of the Hessians 
closed around him, " wrapped in their great white cloaks 
pressed tightly against one another, protecting him from 
wind and cold. The next morning three-fourths of them 
were dead, and buried beneath the snow." 

By the time the French came near the Beresina, the 
two Russian armies, which had been released by the 
treaties the Czar had made with Turkey and Sweden, 
had reached the scene of war, and threatened the line of 
retreat. Kutusoff in overwhelming force in the rear, Witt- 
genstein and Tchitchagoff in front and flank, the French 
seemed doomed. When the Russians were driven by 
Oudinot from Borissow, they burnt the bridge over the 
Beresina. The ice had melted, the river was swollen, 
it was wide and deep, and the Russians were on the 
opposite bank ready to dispute the passage. To bridge 
and cross the river in the face of these Russians — such 
was the French necessity : either that or surrender, for 
Kutusoff was close behind. 

Already the Emperor had destroyed his papers and 
burned his eagles to save them from capture ; already 

2k 



498 NAPOLEON chap. 

had provided himself with poison, resolved to die rather 
than be taken prisoner. 

Standing up to their lips in the freezing current of 
the river, soldiers worked all night, fixing the timbers 
for the bridge. It was a terrible labor, and several lost 
their lives, drowned or frozen. Those who toiled on, 
had to keep the masses of ice pushed away while they 
worked. 

The Emperor sat in a wretched hovel, waiting for day. 
Great tears rolled down his cheeks. " Berthier, how are 
we to get out of this ? " Murat urged him to take an 
escort of a few Poles, cross the river higher up, and es- 
cape. The Emperor silently shook his head, and Murat 
said no more. 

Suddenly came news that was almost too good for 
belief : the Russians had disappeared ! Tchitchagoff, 
deceived by Napoleon's feint to cross elsewhere, or mis- 
led by Kutusoff's despatches, had led his army away. 
The line of retreat was now open, the bridges were 
rapidly finished, and with shouts of " Live the Emperor ! " 
the jubilant French began to cross. When in their hurry 
a jam occurred in the passage, and artillery teams got 
blocked. Napoleon himself sprang on the bridge, caught 
the horses, and helped to free the pieces. 

The bridges, constructed under so many difficulties and 
in such haste, were frail, the crush of the crowd in going 
over became greater and greater. Finally the bridges 
gave way. They were repaired, but broke again. Be- 
ginning with this, the tumult, the terror, the frantic 
struggle for place, the loss of life, became frightful. The 
weak fell, they were trampled by men and horses, and 
ground to pulp by wheels. Some perished on the bridges. 



XXXVI THE EETREAT 499 

others were pushed off and drowned in the river. There 
were no side-rails or ledges, nothing to keep those on the 
outer edge from being crowded off — and they went over 
by hundreds, by thousands. The Russians under Witt- 
genstein having come up, a fierce battle ensued between 
them and the French rear-guard. Amid wild confusion, 
the passage of the river continued, while a storm raged 
and the cannon roared. In the evening the large bridge, 
crushed by the weight upon it, gave way, and with a 
fearful cry, which rose above the storm and the battle, 
the multitude that was crossing sank forever. Next day 
the battle raged again, while the crossing continued. 
Early in the night, Victor's rear-guard began to cross, the 
Russians cannonading the bridge, and covering it with 
the dead. Next morning the bridge was burned, and 
all the thousands of stragglers and camp-followers were 
cut off, and perished miserably. 

Beyond the Beresina, the regulars of the Russian army 
did not press the pursuit, but the Cossacks hung on, 
inflicting heavy losses. From cold, from hunger, from 
disease, the French continued to lose fearfully; but the 
broken remnant of the Grand Army was now compara- 
tively safe from the enemy. 

Full details of the Malet conspiracy having reached 
Napoleon, he became anxious and restless. He believed 
he could render greater service to himself and the Empire 
by being in Paris. Turning over the command to Murat, 
at Smorgoni, the Emperor entered a covered sleigh, and 
set out for France. 

Accompanied by Duroc, Caulaincourt and Lobau, Rou- 
stan the Mameluke, and a Polish officer, the Emperor 
sped across the snow on his way homeward. Almost 



600 NAPOLEON chap. 

captured by Cossacks, he reached Warsaw on the 15th of 
December, 1812, where he put up at the English Hotel, 
and sent for the Abbe de Pradt, his minister to the Grand 
Duchy. Here, in a small room of the hotel, moving about 
restlessly, stamping his feet for circulation while a servant 
girl bent over the hearth trying to make a fire from green 
wood, he gave his instructions to his treacherous minis- 
ter, and announced that in the following spring he would 
be back in the Niemen at the head of three hundred thou- 
sand men. Then he sped onward toward Saxony. 

Late at night, December 14, 1812, the sledge of the 
flying Emperor reached Dresden, where there was a brief 
conference between Napoleon and his faithful ally. Bit- 
ter beyond description must have been the reflections of 
the lonely fugitive in hurrying through those streets, 
where a few months before kings had crowded to his 
antechamber ! 

Escaping the conspiracies aimed at his life in Germany, 
he safely entered France, and reached Paris, late at night, 
December 18, 1812, arriving at the Tuileries almost alone, 
in a hackney coach. 

There was an outburst of indignation in the Grand 
Army remnants when it was known that the Emperor 
had gone. "The same trick he played us in Egypt," 
said one General to another. Murat had on his hands a 
thankless task at best, and under his management the 
situation did not improve. At Wilna the Cossack 
" Hourra ! " stampeded the French, who fled, loosing six 
thousand prisoners. At the steep hill, a few miles beyond, 
the horses could not drag the artillery up the ice-covered 
road, and it was abandoned. 

Sick of such a responsibility, Murat bethought himself 



XXXVI THE EETREAT 601 

that he also had a kingdom that might need his presence, 
and on January 16, 1813, he made over the command to 
Eugene Beauharnais. 

There were seventeen thousand men in the army when 
Murat left it ; Eugene increased its numbers until, by 
the 9th of March, 1813, it was an effective force of forty 
thousand. Taking a strong position, his line stretching 
from Magdeburg to Dresden, the loyal Eugene waited for 
his Emperor to bring up reenforcements. 



CHAPTER XXXVII 

rpHERE is no convincing evidence that the Russian war 
of 1812 was generally unpopular in France. There is 
no proof whatever that any national calamity growing out 
of it was expected or feared. So great was the confidence 
which the Emperor's uninterrupted success had inspired, 
that the current belief was that Russia would be beaten 
and brought to terms. The glamour of the Dresden con- 
ference was sufficient to dazzle the French people, and the 
magnificent host which gathered under the eagles of the 
Empire left them no room for doubts. Led by such a cap- 
tain as Napoleon, this army of half a million men would 
bear down all opposition. Bulletins from the front, dic- 
tated by the Emperor, did not fail to produce the impres- 
sion desired ; and when at length the victory of Borodino 
was followed by the French entry into Moscow, national 
enthusiasm and pride reached its height. 

The first shadow that fell upon France, the first thrill 
of fear, was caused by the news that the Russians had 
given their capital to the flames. Still, when it became 
known that the Emperor was quartering the army amid 
the ruins, that there was shelter and food for all, that 
communications between Paris and Moscow were so well 
guarded that not a courier or convoy had been cut off, 
that Napoleon, seemingly quite at ease, was giving his 

502 



CHAP. XXXVII IN PAEIS AGAIN 503 

attention to the internal affairs of France, was drawing 
up regulations for schools and theatres, was corresponding 
with his son's governess upon the subject of the child's 
teething, the French convinced themselves that the inva- 
sion had proved another triumph. They could not put 
their eyes upon that sombre figure in the Kremlin, the 
chief who had not a word to say to those about him, who 
lay listless upon the sofa day by day, — a leader without 
a plan, — wrapping himself in the delusion that even yet 
the Czar would accept his peaceful overtures. 

So strong was the system which Napoleon had organized 
in France that it went on in his absence just as regularly 
as when he was present. Even when the daring General 
Malet, encouraged by the Emperor's great distance from 
his capital, conspired with the priest, Abb^ Lafon, to over- 
throw the government, the attempts never had the slight- 
est chance of success. By means of a forged decree of 
the Senate, and the announcement that the Emperor was 
dead, the conspirators were for a moment enabled to secure 
control of a small body of troops, arrest the minister and 
the prefect of police, and to take possession of the city 
hall. But almost immediately the authorities asserted 
themselves, seized the conspirators, and put them to death. 

The true significance of this episode lay in the fact that 
so violent a revolutionist as Malet, who had plotted to kill 
Napoleon because of the Concordat, was found in league 
with the Abbe Lafon, a royalist and clerical fanatic, and 
that they had agreed upon a programme which was so emi- 
nently sane as to be formidable. 

According to their plan. Napoleon's family were to be 
set aside, the conscription abolished, and the most oppres- 
sive taxes lifted. The Pope was to be restored to his tem- 



604 NAPOLEON chap. 

poral power, and France was to secure peace with the 
world by consenting to be reduced to her old boundaries 
of Rhine, Alps, and Pyrenees. Those who had purchased 
the confiscated property of the Church and the nobles were 
to be quieted with the assurance that their titles should 
not be questioned. 

When we remember that peace was finally established in 
France upon substantially the same lines as those marked 
out by the Abbe Lafon, it becomes evident that he was in 
touch with those royalist clericals who, failing miserably 
in 1812, succeeded completely two years later. Napo- 
leon's uneasiness when he heard of the conspiracy, and 
his curiosity in asking for the minutest details, can well be 
understood. 



The twenty-fifth bulletin from the Grand Army told 
France that the retreat from Moscow had begun. The 
twenty-eighth bulletin, dated from Smolensk, and made 
public in Paris on November 29, 1812, announced that 
winter had set in. After this, France was left for eighteen 
days without news — eighteen days filled with dread. 
Then on December 17 came the avalanche. The twenty- 
ninth bulletin, revealing much, suggested all — the Grand 
Army was no more ! The consternation, the dismay, the 
stupor of grief and terror which overspread the stricken 
land, can be imagined ; it passes the power of words. 

And the home-coming of the Emperor — what was it 
like, this time? 

It was midnight in Paris, the 18th of December, 1812. 
The Empress Maria Louisa, at the Tuileries, sad and un. 
well, had gone to bed. The imperial babe, the infant 



xxxvn IN PAEIS AGAIN 505 

King of Rome, was asleep. It was a mournful time in 
France. Where was the hut from one end of the Em- 
pire to the other which did not hear sobs this bitter, bitter 
night? How many women, at cheerless firesides, wept 
and praj'^ed for sons, husbands, lovers, shrouded in motion- 
less snow on far Russian plains ! Even the Empress was 
sorrowful. She knew nothing of the fate of the army or 
its chief. Napoleon himself might get rest for his unrest- 
ing spirit from Cossack lance or Russian gun — in which 
event the Empress Maria might find untold calamity for 
her imperial self. 

A common cab rolled into the courtyard below, and 
steps were heard hastily ascending the stairs. Two men 
hooded and wrapped up in furs, pushed their way into 
the anteroom to the Empress's bedchamber. Voices were 
heard in this anteroom, and the Empress, frightened, was 
just getting out of bed, when Napoleon burst in, rushed 
up to her, and caught her in his arms. 

On the following day, according to Pasquier, the Em- 
peror admitted no one but his archchancellor, his min- 
isters, and his intimates. On the 20th, which was Sunday, 
he attended divine service, and then held the usual- levee; 
after which he formally received the Senate and the 
Council. Seated upon his throne, enveloped in his 
robes of state, this wonderful man, so recently a fugi- 
tive fleeing almost alone through the wilds of Poland, 
never presented a serener face to the world, nor looked 
down upon the grandees who bowed before him with 
haughtier glance, than upon this memorable Sabbath. 
Loyal addresses were listened to with dignity and compos- 
ure ; imperial responses were made in a tone which con- 
vinced France and Europe that Napoleon remained 



506 NAPOLEON chap. 

unconquered. Sucli was the grandeur of his attitude, so 
powerfully did his fortitude, courage, magnetic audacity 
appeal to this gallant nation, that it rallied to him with 
almost universal sympathy and enthusiasm. Towns, 
cities, corporate bodies, imperial dependencies, sent in 
loyal addresses, offers of cordial support. From Italy, 
Holland, the Rhine provinces, poured in warm expres- 
sions of attachment and fidelity. Rome, Milan, Florence, 
Turin, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Mayence, testified their 
sense of the benefits his rule had conferred upon them, 
and tendered him " arms, armies, gold, fidelity, and con- 
stancy." 

Napoleon had said that he would be back in Germany 
in the spring with three hundred thousand men. He lost 
no time in getting ready to keep his promise. It was an 
awful task — this creation of a new army ; but he set about 
it with a grim resolution, a 'patient persistence, which 
accomplished wonders. Skeleton regiments of veterans 
were filled in with youthful recruits, and hurriedly drilled. 
The twelve hundred cannon lost in Russia were replaced 
by old guns from the arsenals, or new ones from the 
foundries. The enormous loss of war material was made 
good from the reserves in the military depots. But where 
could the Emperor get horses to supply the mighty num- 
ber frozen or starved in Russia ? He could not get them. 
His utmost exertions could but supply teams for the 
artillery. Of cavalry he could mount almost none. 

Meditate a moment on the situation. The civilized 
world stood arrayed against one man, one people. Eng- 
land on the seas, in Portugal, in Spain ; Russia marching 
on with a victorious host ; Sweden (having been promised 
Norway and English money) uniting with the Czar ; 



xxxvn IN PAEIS AGAIN 507 

Prussia and Austria leaving the side of France, — Prussia 
joining in the crusade, and Austria preparing to do so, — 
smaller German powers threatened with ruin if they did 
not declare war upon Napoleon ; Murat at Naples betray- 
ing the man who had given him the crown ; the Pope 
doing his utmost to sow disaffection by troubling the con- 
science of Catholics throughout the Empire ; royalists 
in France beginning to stir, covertly and stealthily, in the 
tortuous ways of intrigue and conspiracy. All this we 
see upon one side. And upon the other, what? One 
man of supreme genius and courage, — backed by one 
gallant nation, — preparing to lead forth, to meet a world 
in arms, an army composed largely of boys, almost with- 
out cavalry, and almost without drill. 

" I noticed at this epoch," says Constant, " that the 
Emperor had never hunted so frequently." Two or three 
times a week the hunting suit was donned, arid the im- 
perial party would seek the pleasures of the chase. As 
Napoleon had no real fondness for hunting, his valet was 
surprised. One day he learned the explanation. English 
newspapers, as the Emperor told Duroc, had been repeat- 
ing that he was ill, could not stir, and was no longer good 
for anything. " I'll soon make them see that I am as 
sound in body as in mind ! " 

One of these hunts. Napoleon endeavored to turn to 
a particularly good account. The Pope was at Fontaine- 
bleau, to which place he had been removed from Savona 
at the opening of the Russian campaign. His quarrel 
with the Emperor had become most annoying in its conse- 
quences. Disaffection, because of it, had found its way 
into the very Council of State. All attempt at negotia- 
tion had been fruitless. On the eve of another great war, 



508 NAPOLEON chap. 

here was a question which demanded settlement; and the 
Emperor determined to go in person to the Pope. 

On January 19, 1813, the hunt was directed to Gros- 
bois, the fine estate which had belonged to Barras, then to 
Moreau, and then to Berthier, Prince of Neufch^tel. At 
Grosbois, accordingly, the imperial party hunted. " But 
what was the surprise of all his suite when, at the moment 
of reentering the carriages, his Majesty ordered them to 
be driven toward Fontainebleau." 

The Empress and the ladies, having no raiment with 
them other than hunting costumes, were in some confusion 
at the prospect. The Emperor teased them for a while, and 
then let them know that by his orders the necessary change 
of clothes had been sent from Paris beforehand and would 
be ready for them at Fontainebleau. Taking up his quar- 
ters in the ancient palace, Napoleon and Maria Louisa 
went informally to call upon the Pope. The meeting was 
affectionate. Again there were huggings and kissings ; 
again it was " My father ! " " My son ! " And again the 
magnetism, the adroit winsomness of Napoleon, swept the 
aged pontiff off his feet. He signed a new compact with 
his " son " ; and once more there came to them both the 
bliss due to the peacemakers. 

Radiant with pleasure, Napoleon returned to Paris ; and, 
quick as couriers could speed, went the good news to all 
parts of the Empire. But he had been too fast. He had 
given permission that the rebellious cardinals — " the black 
cardinals," who, refusing to attend the celebration of the 
religious marriage with Maria Louisa, had been forbidden 
to wear the red robes — might attend the Pope. And these 
black cardinals had not changed their color, — were still 
black, — and they began immediately to urge the Holy 



xxxvii IN PARIS AGAIN 609 

Father to break his plighted word. The Holy Father did 
so, pleading by way of excuse, that the paper he had signed 
was not a contract or treaty, but only the basis of one ; and 
that Napoleon had acted in bad faith in making it public. 
But the Emperor inserted the treat}'- in the official gazette, 
keeping up the pretence that all was peace between him 
and the Pope ; so that the French people at large knew no 
better until a much later date. 

There are critics who say that Napoleon was too hasty 
in setting out to join his army in April, 1813. But the 
plain facts of the case would seem to show that Napoleon 
knew what he was about. Prussia had issued her declara- 
tion of war on March 17, 1813, and Bliicher pushed forward 
to the Elbe. Russian troops had likewise reached the 
Elbe, and Cossacks raided in the vicinity of Dresden, 
which the French, under Davoust, evacuated. Blucher 
entered the Saxon capitol ; the Saxon king was a fugitive ; 
and the Prussians passed on toward Leipsic. 

By the 24th of April the Czar of Russia and the King 
of Prussia were in Dresden. Bernadotte, at the head of 
thirty thousand Swedes, had joined Biilow, and was 
covering Berlin. 

In view of these events, how can it be said with assur- 
ance that Napoleon was overhasty in taking the field ? 

Remembering that the Allies had threatened war upon 
those minor German powers who would not join them, 
and that Saxony was already in their grasp, it seems 
that Napoleon's conduct admits of easy explanation. 
Unless he checked the Allies, and that speedily, the Rhine 
Confederation would go to pieces ; the French garrisons 
in various German cities would be lost. Eugene and 
his army would be cut off at Magdeburg, and the fabric 



510 NAPOLEON chap. 

of Napoleonic Empire would fall without a blow having 
been struck in its defence. 

To accomplish these very purposes, the Allies had 
pressed forward ; and great must have been the confusion 
in both armies ; for Napoleon, as well as his enemies, was 
surprised when the two armies struck each other at 
Liitzen, May 2, 1813. A bloody struggle followed; 
the Allies were outgeneralled, and they retreated from 
the field. Having no cavalry, the Emperor lost the 
usual fruits of victory ; but the mere fact that he, so 
recently the fugitive from a lost army, now appeared 
at the head of another host, and had driven Russians 
and Prussians back in defeat, produced a moral effect 
which was immense. The enemy was driven beyond the 
Elbe ; all hopes of breaking up the Rhine Confederation 
were at an end ; Eugene and Napoleon would now unite ; 
Saxony was redeemed. Napoleon entered Dresden in 
triumph. His friend and all}^, the Saxon king, returned 
to his capital. The French army was full of confidence : 
the Allies made no effort to stand their ground till they 
reached Bautzen, on the Spree. Here, on May 21 and 
22, they were assailed by the French, and again over- 
thrown. 

So competent a judge as Lord Wolseley is of the opin- 
ion that a mistake of Marshal Ney in this battle saved the 
allied army from total ruin. The Russians and Prussians 
held a strong fortified position resting on the Bohemian 
Mountains, from which there was only one line of retreat. 
Napoleon's quick eye took in the situation, and he sent 
Ney to the rear of the enemy with seventy thousand 
men, while he assailed their front with eighty thousand. 
In executing this turning moveifient, Ney became en- 



XXXVII IN PARIS AGAIN 611 

gaged with a small force of Prussians, which Bliicher 
had detached to protect his rear. " Instead of pressing 
his march along the rear of the allied army to cut off 
its retreat, and attack it in the rear, whilst Napoleon 
assailed it in front, Ney allowed his movements to be 
checked, and his direction diverted by this insignificant 
Prussian detachment. This fighting soon roused Bliicher 
to a sense of his extreme danger, and he at once fell back 
and made good his retreat." The Russians made the 
best of a bad situation till dark, and then escaped during 
the night. " Ney had, in fact, only succeeded in manoeuvr- 
ing the Allies out of a position in which Napoleon intended 
to destroy them, and where they must have been des- 
troyed had his orders been skilfully obeyed." 

As it was, the Allies drew off without losing a gun, and 
Napoleon, looking over the thousands of dead that cum- 
bered the field, exclaimed in rage and grief, " What a mas- 
sacre for nothing ! " 

It was at this stage of the campaign that Napoleon is 
thought to have made the crowning mistake of his later 
years. He halted his victorious columns, and signed the 
armistice of Pleiswitz (June 4, 1813). 

Austria had, since her defeats in 1809, fully recovered 
her strength. Her armies reorganized, her people ani- 
mated by a patriotic spirit which had been intensified by 
promises of constitutional reforms, she had come unhurt 
out of the war of 1812, and was now determined to recover 
her lost provinces and her position as an independent 
power of the first class. With Russia and France both 
severely crippled by the late struggle, Austria realized 
her advantage too well to allow the opportunity to pass. 
Either from Napoleon or the Allies the position lost in 1809 



512 NAPOLEON chap. 

must be recovered. With this end in view, Metternich 
negotiated with all parties, — Prussia, England, France, 
and Russia. The amount of lying this able and eminent 
Christian did at this critical time would probably have 
taxed the conscience of even such veterans in deception as 
Fouche and Talleyrand. 

Whether Napoleon could have won the friendship of 
Austria by frankly surrendering to her demands for the 
restitution of her lost territory, must always remain a mat- 
ter of doubt. Inasmuch as the Austrian army was not 
quite ready to take the field, and her treasury was empty, 
and she had no complaint against Napoleon, excepting 
that she had made an unprovoked attack upon him in 
1809 and had been thoroughly whipped, the probability 
is that a prompt concession of her demands would have 
gained her neutrality in the war of 1813. But this is by 
no means certain. When we remember the strength of 
dynastic prejudices, the influence of British money, the 
rising tide of German nationality and of hatred of Napo- 
leon, the intense antagonism to French principles, the 
activity of royalist and clerical intrigue — it is difficult 
to escape the conclusion that had Napoleon yielded up 
what he had taken from Austria, he could have stopped 
at nothing short of a full surrender all along the line. 
And had he returned to France shorn of all that French 
blood had won, the storm of indignation there would have 
driven him from the throne. Napoleon himself expressed 
substantially this view at St. Helena ; it may have been 
sound. Why, then ; did he grant the truce ? What did he 
mean by saying, after he had signed it, " If the Allies do 
not sincerely wish for peace, this armistice may prove our 
ruin " ? No one can say. There are facts which appear 



xxxvii IN PARIS AGAIN 513 

to prove conclusively that he ardently wished for an hon- 
orable peace. Other facts seem to indicate that he was 
playing for time, that he never did mean to give up 
anything, and that he was beaten in a grand game of 
duplicity, where, intending to deceive, he was duped. 



2l 



CHAPTER XXXVIII 

npHE guiding hand of Austrian diplomacy at this time 
being Metternich's, and that astute person having left 
behind him certain Memoirs which his family have arranged 
and published, it may be fairly presumed that any revela- 
tion of Metternich's own perfidy made in these Memoirs 
can be credited. 

According to his own story, Metternich sought an 
interview with the Czar (June 17, 1813) and urged him 
to trust implicitly to the Austrian mediation which had 
been tendered to the belligerents. Alexander had his 
misgivings, and inquired : — 

"What will become of our cause if Napoleon accepts the 
mediation ? " 

Metternich replied : — 

" If he declines, the truce will come to an end, and you 
will find us among the number of your allies : if he 
accepts, the negotiations will most certainly show that 
Napoleon is neither wise nor just, and then the result 
will be the same. In any case, we shall have gained time 
to bring up our armies for combined attack." 

What did Alexander mean by "our cause," which might 
be ruined by Napoleon's consent to allow Austria to medi- 
ate ? If peace was all that the Allies wanted, why demur 
to Austria's offer ? 

514 



CHAP. xxxTiii METTERNICH 515 

And what did Metternich mean by assuring the Czar 
that it made no difference whether Napoleon declined 
or accepted, the results would be the same ? 

Evidently he meant to convince Alexander that "our 
cause " was as dear to Austria as to Russia ; and that if 
Napoleon trusted to Austrian mediation, he would be 
deceived and despoiled. The Czar so understood it, and 
he " seemed exceedingly well pleased." 

The political meaning of " our cause " was this : Eng- 
lish diplomats had been unusually busy, and had (June 14 
and 15, 1813) negotiated new treaties with Russia and 
Prussia whereby Great Britain agreed to pay heavy sub- 
sidies to those powers to prosecute the war, which was not 
to be ended without England's consent. 

Inasmuch as England was no party to the negotiations 
then pending between Napoleon and the Allies, one of two 
things is obvious : the Allies were intent upon betraying 
England, or of duping France. As to which of the two 
it was meant to deceive, the language used by Metternich 
to Alexander, and by Alexander to Metternich, leaves no 
doubt. 

What, on the other hand, were the thoughts of Na- 
poleon ? On June 2, 1813, he wrote to Eugene, who had 
been sent back to Italy, " I shall grant a truce on account 
of the armaments of Austria, and in order to gain time to 
bring up the Italian army to Laybach to threaten Vienna." 

There are those who see in this a proof that Napoleon 
did not desire peace. Read in the light of the surrounding 
circumstances, it is just as easy to see in the letter an evi- 
dence that Napoleon merely wished to escape Austrian 
dictation. 

He had already offered to treat for peace with Russia 



516 NAPOLEON chap. 

and Prussia; and they, controlled by English influence, 
had refused to treat, save through Austria. 

Anxious, suspicious, harassed by all sorts of cares. 
Napoleon summoned Metternich to Dresden. 

Napoleon understood Metternich thoroughly, and de- 
spised him. With this man, as with Fouch^, Talleyrand, 
and Bernadotte, the proud Corsican had too lightly in- 
dulged in the perilous license of contempt. 

"Sire, why do you not send Metternich away?" Duroc 
inquired one day at the Tuileries. 

"Ah, well," answered Napoleon, "if Austria sent me a 
new minister, I should have him to study; as to Metter- 
nich, he can no longer deceive me." 

Summoned to Dresden, the Austrian diplomat went, and 
on June 27, 1813, held his famous interview with Napo- 
leon. It was not then known to any save the parties to 
the treaty that Lord Aberdeen, acting for England, had 
already made his bargain with Austria, whereby the latter 
power agreed to accept an enormous bribe to enter the 
coalition against France. On the very day of Metternich's 
interview with Napoleon, Austria was actually signing the 
Reichenbach treaty which, affirmed bj'- the Emperor Fran- 
cis on August 1, 1813, placed Austria's two hundred 
thousand men at the service of "our cause." 

Napoleon knew nothing of this ; he suspected it, 
dreaded it, desperately sought to avert it. Hence his 
call to Metternich. 

In his Memoirs^ the Austrian statesman relates that he 
found the French Emperor at the Marcolini Garden, near 
the Elster meadows. " The French army sighed for peace. 
The generals had little confidence in the issue of the war." 
"The appearance of the Austrian minister at Napoleon's 



XXXVIII 



METTERNICH 517 



headquarters could only be regarded by the French gen- 
erals as decisive in its results." Bursting with self-im- 
portance was this Metternich, of whom Napoleon said that 
lie was always believing that he controlled everything, 
whereas he was eternally being controlled by others. In 
this instance he walked toward Napoleon's rooms with the 
majestic port of an arbiter of nations, whereas the whole 
thing had already been determined by Lord Aberdeen's 
negotiations at Vienna, not to mention the masterful influ- 
ence of Sir Charles Stewart and Lord Cathcart in the 
counsels of Russia and Prussia. 

" It would be difficult to describe," says Metternich, " the 
expression of painful anxiety shown on the faces of the 
crowd of men in uniform who were assembled in the wait- 
ing rooms of the Emperor. The Prince of Neufch^tel 
(Berthier) said to me in a low voice, " Do not forget that 
Europe requires peace, and especially France, which will 
have nothing but peace." 

Of Berthier, Napoleon himself said that, in anything out- 
side his specialty of writing despatches, "he was a mere 
goose." If Berthier made at this juncture any such re- 
mark to Metternich as that important man records, it 
would be a charity to let Berthier escape with so light a 
reproach as that of being a mere goose. Such a remark 
to such a man, by such a man, and at such a time is rankly 
odorous of disaffection, disloyalty, and the incipient treason 
which broke out openly a few months later. 

Metternich, referring to Berthier's remark, complacently 
states, " Not seeing myself called upon to answer this, I 
at once entered the Emperor's reception room." Great 
was Metternich in this crisis, too great to bandy words 
with a mere mushroom. Prince de Neufch^tel ! 



618 NAPOLEON chap. 

" Napoleon waited for me, standing in the middle of the 
room with his sword at his side, and his hat under his arm. 
He came up in a studied manner and inquired after the 
health of the Emperor Francis. His countenance soon 
clouded over, and he spoke, standing in front of me, as 
follows : — 

" ' So you too want war ; well, you shall have it. Three 
times have I replaced the Emperor Francis on his throne. 
I have promised always to live in peace with him. I have 
married his daughter. To-day I repent of it.' " 

Metternich says that at this crisis he felt himself the 
representative of all European society. He felt the 
strength of his position, felt that the mighty Napoleon 
lay in the hollow of his hand. 

" If I may say so, Napoleon seemed to me small ! " 

"If I may say so" — why the modest doubt? Where 
is the limit of what one may say in one's Memoirs? Do 
the writers of Memoirs ever by any possibility get worsted 
in discussion, or fail to say and do the very best thing that 
could have been said and done ? 

Metternich proceeds to relate how he read Napoleon a 
paternal lecture ; how he explained to the French Emperor 
that France as well as Europe required peace; how he 
intimated that Austria would throw her aid to the coali- 
tion ; how he predicted that the French army would be 
swept away, and how he asked the Emperor, " If this 
juvenile army that you levied but yesterday should be 
destroyed, what then ? " " When Napoleon heard these 
words he was overcome with rage, he turned pale, and his 
features were distorted. ' You are no soldier,' said he, 
'and you do not know what goes on in the mind of a 
soldier. I was brought up in the field, and a man such 



xxxviii METTERNICH 519 

as I am does not concern himself much about the lives of 
a million of men.' With this exclamation he threw his 
hat into the corner of the room." 

Of course the Memoirs represent Metternich as promptly 
taking advantage of this imprudent outbreak, and as 
throwing Napoleon quite upon the defensive. It is 
noticeable that in the Memoirs of Napoleon's enemies, 
the authors invariably got the better of him in trials of 
wit. Some very dull people gave him some very crushing 
conversational blows — in their Memoirs. 

But this much is known of the Dresden interview, — 
it lasted half a day, and Metternich reports less than half 
an hour's talk. The Austrian does not record how unerr- 
ingly Napoleon guessed the riddle, and how directly he 
put the question, — " Metternich, how much has England 
paid you to act this part against me ? " Nor does he 
record the fact that Napoleon, in his extremity, offered 
to buy Austria off by ceding the Illyrian provinces, and 
that the bargain could not be made because the Emperor 
Francis advanced his demands as often as Napoleon enlarged 
his concessions. Austria, sold to England, was perfectly 
willing to be bought by France ; but the price demanded 
was so excessive, that Napoleon indignantly cried out, 
"I will die under the ruins of my throne before I will 
consent to strip France of all her possessions, and dis- 
honor myself in the eyes of the world ! " 

Metternich records that he said to Napoleon : " You are 
lost. I thought it when I came here ; now I know it." 
The Emperor's reply to this remarkable observation is not 
on the Metternich tablets. The writers of Memoirs have 
a habit of getting in the last word. 

Not satisfied with having crushed Napoleon, Metier- 



520 NAPOLEON chap. 

nich dealt a parting blow to Berthier, the Emperor's 
goose. 

" In the anterooms I found the same generals whom I 
had seen on entering. They crowded round me to read 
in my face the impression of nearly nine hours' conversa- 
tion. I did not stop, and I do not think I satisfied their 
curiosity. Berthier accompanied me to my carriage. He 
seized a moment when no one was near to ask me whether 
I had been satisfied with the Emperor." To this humblest 
of questions, " Were you satisfied with the Emperor ? " the 
important Metternich replied, with a loftiness which must 
have painfully bruised the Emperor's goose : — 

" Yes, yes ! It is all over with the man. He has lost 
his wits." 

It is all over with the man ; he has lost his mind — 
great Metternich, small Napoleon, and poor Berthier, the 
Emperor's assiduous goose ! 

One other important fact the Metternich Memoirs record: 
the Archduke Charles needed twenty additional days to 
bring up the Austrian reserves, and Metternich undertook 
to decoy Napoleon into an extension of the armistice. The 
Memoirs record how Napoleon vainly endeavored through 
the Duke of Bassano to come to terms of peace ; how Met- 
ternich stubbornly stood his ground, refusing to budge an 
inch ; how Napoleon kept up the contest until the Austrian 
ordered his carriage and was about to leave Dresden ; how 
Napoleon then yielded, calling Metternich back, and sign- 
ing an agreement to accept Austrian mediation, to prolong 
the armistice till August 10, and to submit the issues to a 
congress of the powers to be assembled at Prague on the 
10th of July. 

In Thiers's History of the Consulate and Empire we read 



xxxTin METTERNICH 621 

that Napoleon by his cleverness and diplomacy lured the 
Allies into granting him precious delays most necessary to 
his welfare. In Metternich's Memoirs we read that the 
Austrian, by his adroitness and implied threats, led Napo- 
leon to the exact time which the Archduke Charles said 
was needed to get his forces just where he wanted them. 
Which of these contradictory stories is the truth ? which is 
history ? 

The Congress of Prague assembled, and it soon became 
apparent that peace would not be made. British influence 
dominated it from the first. By consenting, once for all, 
to surrender his empire and become King of France, — 
France with the old boundaries, — Napoleon could doubt- 
less have rid himself of the Allies. But what then? 
Could he have held the throne in France after so com- 
plete a submission to foreign dictation? Could he thus 
have secured internal peace for France itself? Would 
not England have pressed home the advantage, restored 
the Bourbons, and destroyed the work of the Revolution? 

When we recall what took place in 1814 and afterward, 
— the steady progress of reaction and counter-revolution 
until absolutism and aristocratic privilege had completely 
triumphed again throughout Europe, — we can but honor 
the sagacity and the unquailing courage of Napoleon in 
standing his ground, indomitably, against combinations 
without and disaffection within, rather than make craven 
surrender to a coalition which meant nothing less than 
death to democratic principles and institutions, as well as 
to his own supremacy. . 

In Spain the fortunes of war were going heavily against 
France. King Joseph was in everybody's way, hampering 
military movements by his absurdities; the marshals were 



522 NAPOLEON chap, xxxvin 

at odds with each other, and no cooperation could be had. 
Wellington, whose progress in the peninsula had been 
slow and fluctuating, now advanced into Spain, and won 
a decisive battle. Just as the victory of Salamanca had 
influenced Russian councils in 1812, that of Vittoria bore 
heavily against Napoleon at the Congress of Prague. 

Napoleon himself had no confidence in the negotiations, 
and was painfully aware of the manifold perils which beset 
him. He returned to Mayence, and bent all his energies 
to the improvement of his situation. One day he called 
upon Beugnot to write at his dictation, and Beugnot, flur- 
ried at the unexpected summons, twice took the Emperor's 
chair. Napoleon said : " So you are determined to sit in 
my seat I You have chosen a bad time for it." 

Soult was sent off to Spain to hold Wellington in check, 
Fouch^ and Talleyrand were summoned to aid in fathom- 
ing the Austrian intrigue, and influences were set to work 
to bring Murat back to the army. 



CHAPTER XXXIX 

rpO Mayence the Empress Maria Louisa came, to spend a 
few days pending the peace negotiations. If Napoleon 
cherished the belief that her presence would have any 
bearing upon her father's policy, the illusion soon van- 
ished. Austrian diplomats were already saying, " Politics 
made the marriage ; politics can unmake it." 

So confident was Austria that the Congress at Prague 
would accomplish nothing, that she had drawn up her 
declaration of war and held it ready, as the last day 
of the truce wore on toward midnight. At the stroke 
of the clock, the paper was delivered for publication, and 
the war signals were lit along the Bohemian mountains. 
When Napoleon's courier arrived, a few hours later, 
bringing to the French envoys authority to sign the terms 
demanded, the Allies declined to consider the matter at 
all. It was too late. Technically they were acting within 
their rights; but if we really wish to know the truth 
about the negotiations, the conduct of those diplomats, 
watching the midnight clock, sending out midnight decla- 
rations of war, and lighting midnight fires to proclaim the 
failure of the Congress, belongs to the class of actions which 
speaks louder than words. If their real purpose had been 
to stop the shedding of blood and to liberate Europe (from 

523 



524 NAPOLEON chai-. 

Napoleon's " cruel yoke," they would never have made so 
great a difference between midnight of the 10th and early 
morning of the 11th. Nothing was to be gained by such 
extreme rigor, beyond the ending of the Congress ; for, by 
the terms of the treaty, six days' notice was necessary 
before the resumption of hostilities. 

Says Metternich : " As the clock struck twelve on the 
night of August 10, I despatched the declaration of war. 
Then I had the beacons lighted which had been prepared 
from Prague to the Silesian frontier, as a sign of the breach 
of the negotiations." 



Pasquier relates an interesting story which he had from 
Daru. 

One day toward the end of July, S^bastiani, a Corsican, 
and a life-long friend of Napoleon, came to make a report, 
and was asked by the Emperor what was being said about 
the military situation. S^bastiani replied that the current 
opinion was that Austria would join the Allies, in which 
event Dresden could no longer be made the central point 
of the French line of defence. 

" You are all right," said Napoleon, " and my mind is 
made up. I am going to return to the banks of the Saale ; 
I will gather there some three hundred thousand men, and, 
with my rear resting on Mayence, my right flank covered 
by the extremity of the mountains of Bohemia, I will show 
the enemy the bull's horns. He will seek to manoeuvre 
under my eyes ; no sooner has he committed his first mis- 
take than I will fall upon him, crush him, and the coalition 
will vanish more quickly than it appeared." 

Daru was sent for and told to go at once and prepare the 



XXXIX DRESDEN AND LEIPSIC 525 

necessary orders for this retrograde movement. As Daru 
was leaving the room, Bassano entered, and the Emperor 
put to him the usual question, "What is being said?" 
Bassano replied that certain persons who pretended to 
know everything were speaking of a backward movement, 
saying : " That your Majesty cannot remain here. They 
forget that the great Frederick, with forces vastly inferior 
to your own, held out all winter in the same position against 
the combined armies of Austria and Russia." 

This comparison made so deep an impression upon Na- 
poleon that when Daru returned a few hours later with 
all the orders he had been told to prepare, he found the 
Emperor in a pensive mood, and was dismissed with these 
words, "The matter requires more thought." 

The result of this new meditation was that he persisted 
in his first system of operations: Dresden remained the 
central point of his line. 

Napoleon's position at the renewal of hostilities was 
well-nigh desperate. He had grossly deceived himself. 
Keenly aware of the demoralized condition of his own 
forces, he had not realized how much worse had been the 
condition of the Allies. Calculating upon the reenforce- 
ments he could muster, he had not rightly estimated the 
strength which Russia and Austria could add to their 
resources. As to Austria, particularly, it seems that he 
miscalculated to the extent of one hundred thousand men. 

In other important respects, the allied position became 
stronger. Marshal Ney's chief of staff, Jomini, deserted, 
and carried over to the enemy the general knowledge he 
had gained in Napoleonic warfare, as well as the special 
information he had obtained in the present campaign. 
General Moreau, leaving Baltimore in the United States, 



626 NAPOLEON chap. 

had landed at Stralsund, where Bernadotte received him 
with the highest military honors ; and he was now in po- 
sition to direct the allied forces. Thus with Bernadotte, 
Jomini, and Moreau to guide their counsels, the Allies 
would be able to combat Napoleon with advantages they 
had never possessed before. They would be advised by 
men who understood his system, men who could antici- 
pate his plans and defeat his combinations. 

" We are teaching them how to beat us ! " Napoleon 
himself had already said, speaking to Lannes of the im- 
proved Russian tactics. In this campaign his enemies 
had agreed upon the best of policies, — to avoid battle 
when he commanded in person, and to crush his lieuten- 
ants wherever found. 

In yet another respect events were telling heavily 
against the French. Marshal Bessieres, commander of 
the cavalry of the Imperial Guard, had been killed in one 
of the first skirmishes ; and, after Bautzen, a spent cannon 
ball had mortally wounded Duroc. Both these were offi- 
cers of the highest merit, devotedly attached to the Em- 
peror, and possessing his implicit confidence. He had 
singled them out at the beginning of his career, had lifted 
them from the ranks, and had raised them to imperial 
peerages. Their loss he felt to be irreparable, and his 
grief was almost overwhelming. For the first time in 
his career he was so prostrated, on the evening of Duroc's 
death, that he was unable to give orders. Alone in his 
tent, his head bowed to his breast, he sat in a stupor of 
sorrow ; and to his officers coming for instructions, he said, 
" Everything to-morrow." Next morning, at breakfast, 
Constant noticed the big tears which rolled down his 
cheeks and fell upon his plate. 



xixix DRESDEN AND LEIPSIC 527 

The Allies, having tricked the great trickster in the 
matter of the i\.nnistice, broke it to effect the junction 
between the Russian and Austrian forces. This much 
more won by fraud, the war began again. 

Napoleon made a dash at Bliicher, who did not forget 
to fall back out of reach, as agreed among the Allies. The 
dreaded Emperor, being at a distance, vainly chasing 
Bliicher, the main army of the Allies marched upon 
Dresden, where St. Cyr was in command of the defence. 

On the 25th of August, 1813, some two hundred thousand 
of the allied troops invested the city, whose garrison was 
about twenty thousand. If the French should lose it, 
ruin to their campaign would follow. In vain Jomini 
urged the Austrian commander, Schwarzenberg, to attack 
at once, while Napoleon was away. No. The leisurely 
Prince, being fatigued, or something else, must await the 
morning of another day ; for Napoleon was in Silesia, too 
far off to be a source of disquiet. On August 26 the 
assault began, St. Cyr meeting it with heroism, but 
steadily losing ground. 

Three hundred pieces of artillery rained shot and shell 
upon the crowded city. The dying and the dead, men, 
women, and children strewed the streets. The inhab- 
itants of the town implored the French to surrender. 
Two regiments of Westphalian hussars, from Jerome 
Bonaparte's kingdom, went over to the enemy. But the 
Emperor had not lost sight of Dresden. When the news 
reached him that the allied army was crossing the Bohe- 
mian frontier, he guessed the point threatened, and hur- 
ried to its relief. As he marched, courier after courier 
from St. Cyr galloped up to hasten the coming of succoi*. 
Napoleon's horses were spurred on to their highest speed, 



528 NAPOLEON char 

till he reached the outskirts of the city, from which, with 
his field-glass, he could survey the battle. The road over 
which he must enter Dresden was swept by such a fire 
from the Austrian guns that it is said Napoleon went 
down upon all fours to crawl past. As he entered the city, 
its defenders went wild with joy. " There he is ! There 
he is ! " was shouted by thousands, as the Old Guard rushed 
forward to meet him. " Nothing was heard," says Cau- 
laincourt, " but clapping of hands and shouts of enthusi- 
asm. Men, women, and children mingled with the troops 
and escorted us to the palace. The consternation and 
alarm which had hitherto prevailed, were now succeeded 
by boundless joy and confidence." 

The Emperor had marched his army one hundred and 
twenty miles in four days over roads which heavy rains 
had turned into bogs. He had arrived in time ; those who 
had strained their eyes to catch the first glimpse of the 
relief columns had not looked in vain. " There he is ! 
There he is!" roused all drooping spirits, gave life to 
dead hope, (so mysteriously irresistible is the influence of 
a great man. The date was August, 1813. Just a few 
months were to roll by before the good city of Paris 
would find itself beleagued by these same Allies. Napoleon 
would again be away, but would again be devouring dis- 
tance, moving heaven and earth to get back in time. 
Again anxious eyes would look out over walls and battle- 
ments, scanning the horizon to catch a glimpse of the white 
horse and the stunted rider, flying to the relief. Ardent 
patriots, seeing what they long to see, will mistake some 
other figure for his, and will raise the cry. " There he 
is ! " But traitors and cowards will be busy in the great 
captain's chief city, his own brother will act the craven 



xxxix ' DRESDEN AND LEIPSIC 529 

and fly, his best-beloved of the surviving marshals will 
fight the feeble fight of the dastard, his son will be torn 
screaming and struggling from the palace, and while the 
haggard eye of the war-worn Emperor, almost there, will 
strain to see the towers of Notre Dame, the white flag will 
fly over a surrendered town. 

Too late ! Just a few hours too late. 



That night in Dresden, after having reconnoitred and 
made all his dispositions. Napoleon was walking up and 
down his room. Stopping suddenly, he turned to Caulain- 
court and said : — 

" Murat has arrived." 

This brilliant soldier had wavered until the battles of 
Liitzen and Bautzen had been gained; but he had now 
come to lead a few more matchless charges of cavalry, 
meteoric in splendor, before he should lose heart again, 
forsake Napoleon utterly, and take his wilful course to 
utter and shameful ruin. 

"Murat has come. I have given him command of my 
guard. As long as I am successful, he will follow my 
fortune." 

The Allies were not aware that either Napoleon or 
Murat had arrived. It is said that the battle had not 
been long in progress before Schwarzenberg turned to the 
Czar and remarked, " The Emperor must certainly be 
in Dresden." 

Holding the allied centre in check by a concentrated 
fire of heavy artillery. Napoleon launched Ney at their 
right and Murat at their left. Both attacks were com- 
pletely successful. The allied army broke at all points, 
2h 



530 NAPOLEON » chap 

and retreated toward Bohemia, leaving some twenty thou- 
sand prisoners in tlie hands of the French. 

Torrents of rain had poured down during the whole day, 
and as Napoleon came riding back into the city that even- 
ing by the side of Murat, his clothes dripped water, and a 
stream poured from his soaked hat. As Constant un- 
dressed him he had a slight chill, followed by fever, and he 
took his bed. 

Worn out as he was, the Emperor must have felt pro- 
foundly relieved. He had won a victory of the first 
magnitude, infinitely greater than those of Liitzen and 
Bautzen, for he now had cavalry. His mistake in having 
granted the armistice had perhaps been redeemed. If his 
lieutenants now served him well, the coalition which had 
put him in such extreme peril would dissolve. He would 
emerge from the danger with glory undimmed, empire 
strengthened. " This is nothing ! " he said, referring to 
his triumph at Dresden. " Wait till we hear from Van- 
damme. He is in their rear. It is there we must look for 
the great results." 

Alas for such calculations ! His lieutenants were ruin- 
ing the campaign faster than he could repair it. The 
Prussians, led by Blilow (nominally under Bernadotte), 
had beaten Oudinot at Grossbeeren, on August 23, driving 
the French back upon the Elbe. Bllicher had caught 
Macdonald in the act of crossing a swollen rirer in Silesia, 
had fallen upon him and destroyed him, in the battle of 
Katzbach, August 26; and, to crown the climax of dis- 
aster, Vandamme, from whom so much had been expected, 
was, partly through a false movement of his own, and 
partly through the failure of Napoleon to support him, 
crushed and captured at Kulm (August 29 and 30). 



XXXIX DRESDEN AND LEIPSIC 631 

Thus, Dresden proved a barren triumph. The Czar of 
Russia and the King of Prussia should have been taken 
prisoners ; the allied army should have been annihilated ; 
the war should have ended with a glorious peace for France. 
How did it happen that the wrecked army escaped, and 
made havoc with Vandamme at Kulm ? 

The story goes that the Emperor, pressing eagerly for- 
ward in pursuit of the vanquished foe, was suddenly 
stricken with severe sickness ; and instead of being 
carried on to Pirna, was hurried back to Dresden. The 
army, left without leadership, slackened in the pursuit; 
the Allies were left undisturbed; and when they came 
upon Vandamme, that rash officer, taken front and rear, 
was overwhelmed by superior numbers. 

As to the cause of Napoleon's sudden illness, accounts 
differ widely. General Marbot states that it was " the 
result of the fatigue caused by five days in the saddle 
under incessant rain." 

According to the Emperor himself, as reported by Daru 
to Pasquier, the illness was "nothing but an attack of 
indigestion caused by a wretched stew seasoned with 
garlic, which I cannot endure." But he had at the time 
believed himself to be poisoned. " And on such trifles," 
said he to Daru, " the greatest events hang ! The present 
one is perhaps irreparable." 

Virtually the same explanation of his sudden return to 
Dresden, and the abandonment of the pursuit, was given 
by Napoleon at St. Helena. 

It is significant that Constant's Memoirs represent the 
Emperor as vomiting and having a chill, accompanied by 
utter exhaustion, upon his return from the battle-field on 
the evening of the 27th. Overwork, exposure, mental 



532 NAPOLEON chap, 

anxiety, the continual strain of mind and body had evi- 
dently brought on a collapse. The illness which recalled 
him back from Pirna may have originated in the same 
natural causes. The " stew seasoned with garlic," or the 
"leg of mutton stuffed with sage" (for each statement 
occurs), may have been merely the thing which precipi- 
tated the breakdown which was already inevitable. 

Whatever the cause, the results were decisive. As at 
Borodino, he lost all control of events, let the campaign 
drift as it would, and recovered himself when it was too 
late to repair the mischief. 

Dresden was to prove the last imperial victory. When 
Napoleon, drenched and dripping, his fine beaver aflop on 
his shoulder, was taken into the arms of the grateful King 
of Saxony, on the return from the battle-field of Dresden, 
he was receiving the last congratulation which he as 
Emperor would ever hear from subject monarch. To this 
limit had already shrunk the fortunes of the conqueror 
who, a few months back, had summoned Talma from Paris 
to play " to a parquet of kings." 

A stray dog wandering about the battle-field of Dresden, 
with a collar on its neck, attracted some curiosity, and it 
was soon known in the French army that the collar bore 
the inscription, "I belong to General Moreau." It was 
soon known, likewise, that this misguided soldier had been 
mortally wounded early in the action, and had died amidst 
the enemies of his country. 

Napoleon believed that he himself had directed the fatal 
shot ; but one who was in Moreau's party at the time con- 
tended that the ball came from a different battery. 

Remaining in tlie vicinity of Dresden till the last days 
of September, Napoleon found himself gradually growing 



XXXIX DRESDEN AND LEIPSIC 633 

weaker. His array was crumbling away through hard- 
ships, disease, and battle. Reenforcements as steadily 
added to the strength of the Allies. Operating in a coun- 
try hostile to him as it had never been before, Napoleon 
had the utmost difficulty in keeping himself advised of 
the numbers and movements of the forces opposed to 
him. So intense was the patriotic spirit in Germany that 
the spy could do almost nothing for the French, while the 
Allies were kept informed of everything. 

It was Bliicher who took the offensive for the Allies, 
and boldly crossed the Elbe at Wartenburg. Napoleon 
rushed from Dresden to throw himself upon the Prus- 
sians ; but as soon as Bliicher learned that Napoleon was 
in his front he shunned battle and went to join Bernadotte 
(October 7, 1813). The huge iron girdle of the allied 
armies was slowly being formed around the French ; it be- 
came evident that the line of the Elbe must be abandoned. 

But before taking this decision it seems that Napoleon 
had contemplated a bold forward march upon Berlin, and 
had been thwarted by the opposition of his generals. Ever 
since the Russian disasters had broken the spell of his 
influence, the Emperor had encountered more or less surli- 
ness and independence among his higher officers. The 
marshals had taken a tone which was almost insubordi- 
nate, and the great captain was no longer able to ignore 
their opinions. 

When it became known that he intended to make a 
dash at Berlin, regardless of the possibility that armies 
double the size of his own might throw themselves between 
him and France, there was almost universal dissatisfac- 
tion among the troops. Moscow was recalled. Nobody 
wanted a repetition of that hideous experience. "Have 



534 NAPOLEON chap. 

not enough of us been killed? Must we all be left 
here ? " 

To add to Napoleon's embarrassment, news came that 
Bavaria had deserted and gone over to the Allies. Says 
Constant, " An unheard-of thing happened : his staff 
went in a body to the Emperor, entreating him to abandon 
his plans on Berlin and march on Leipsic." 

For two days the Emperor did nothing. Quartered in 
the dismal chateau of Dliben, he became as inert, as apa- 
thetic, as he had been at Borodino and at Moscow. "I 
saw him," writes Constant, " during nearly an entire day, 
lying on a sofa, with a table in' front of him covered with 
maps and papers which he did not look at, with no other 
occupation for hours together than that of slowly tracing 
large letters on sheets of white paper." 

The Emperor yielded to the pressure of his officers, and 
" the order to depart was given. There was an outburst 
of almost immoderate joy. Every face was radiant. 
Throughout the army could be heard the cry, ' We are 
going to see France again, to embrace our children, our 
parents, our friends.' " 

Falling back upon Leipsic, Napoleon found Murat al- 
ready engaged with the Austrians. In the hope that 
he could crush Schwarzenberg before Bliicher and Ber- 
nadotte came up, the Emperor prepared for battle. There 
were about one hundred and fifty thousand of the Aus- 
trians, while the French numbered about one hundred 
and seventy thousand; but it was necessary to place the 
divisions of Ney and Marmont on the north, where the 
Russians and Prussians and Swedes were expected. The 
great " Battle of the Nations " began on the morning of 
the 16th of October, 1813, and raged all day. The ad- 



xxxix DEESDEN AND LEIPSIC 535 

vantage was with the French, for they fought from posi- 
tions more or less sheltered ; but the Emperor appears to 
have made one serious mistake. Bliicher not having yet 
arrived, Ney and Marmont were ordered to Napoleon's 
aid in the effort to destroy the Austrians before the com- 
ing of reenforcements. Ney moved, but Marmont was 
already engaged with Bliicher when he received the Em- 
peror's order. Holding his ground and assaulted by over- 
whelming numbers, Marmont's corps was almost destroyed; 
while Ney, divided between his old position and the new, 
rendered no effective service in either place. Just as 
d'Erlon's corps, swinging like a pendulum between 
Quatre-Bras and Ligny did not strike at either point, so 
Ney lost his force on the fatal field of Leipsic. 

General Marbot states, moreover, that Ney left his 
original position without orders from the Emperor. 
Bliicher, getting up before Napoleon expected him, and 
worsting the French on the north, turned the scales in 
favor of the Allies. 

Why it was that Napoleon had not called St. Cyr from 
Dresden, and thus added thirty thousand to his own 
forces, cannot now be known. He himself said at St. 
Helena that he sent despatches to this effect, but that 
they were intercepted. Taking into account the swarms 
of Cossacks and Bashkirs which were flying over the 
country, and also the intensely hostile spirit of the native 
populations, the capture of a French courier would seem 
to have been a natural event. 

However, there are those who say that St. Cyr was left 
at Dresden on purpose, because Napoleon was unwilling 
that the Saxon capital should fall into the hands of the 
enemy. In other words, he left his garrison caged at 



536 NAPOLEON chap. 

Dresden, just as he left cooped up within similar for- 
tresses a sufficient number of veteran troops to have made 
his army as large as that of the Allies. 

In the year 1797 the young Napoleon had driven the 
Austrian armies from Italy, had chased them through the 
mountains of the Tyrol, and had come almost in sight of 
Vienna. Austria sent Count Meerfeldt into the French 
lines to sue for peace, and her prayer was granted. In 
1805 this same Napoleon had shattered the Russo-Aus- 
trian forces at Austerlitz, and was about to capture both 
Czar and Emperor. Again Count Meerfeldt was sent to 
Napoleon's tent to beg for mercy, and again the plea was 
heard. Now it was 1813, the tide had turned, and it 
was Napoleon's time to ask for peace. His messenger 
was a released captive, Count Meerfeldt, he of Leoben and 
Austerlitz ; and to the message neither Czar nor Austrian 
emperor returned any answer whatever. 

During the 17th there was no fighting, and the French 
made no movement. They could probably have retired 
unmolested, but Napoleon was awaiting a reply to his 
propositions. 

During the night, rockets blazed in the sky on the 
north — the signal to Schwarzenberg and Bliicher that 
Bernadotte and Bennigsen had come. The Swedes, the 
German bands, the Russian reserves, were all up, and the 
Allies would now outnumber the French two to one. 

With the light of the 18th began " the greatest battle 
in all authentic history." Nearly half a million men threw 
themselves upon each other with a fury like that of mani- 
acs. Men from every quarter of Europe were there, from 
Spain to Turkey, from the northern seas to the Adriatic 
and Mediterranean, men from palaces and men from huts. 



XXXIX DRESDEN AND LEIPSIC 637 

men who flashed like Murat in the gaudiest uniforms of 
modern Europe, and men like the Bashkirs who wore 
the dress and carried the bow and arrow of ancient 
Scythia. 

The French never fought better than on this day, 
nor did the Allies ; but the French soldier was not what 
he had been, nor were French officers the same. Shortly 
before this the Emperor had said to Augereau, "You 
are no longer the Augereau of Castiglione ; " and the an- 
swer was, " Nor have I the troops of Castiglione." Ney 
had written, after his overthrow at Dennewitz: "I have 
been totally defeated, and do not know whether my army 
has reassembled. The spirit of the generals and officers 
is shattered. I had rather be a grenadier than to com- 
mand under such conditions." Napoleon had exclaimed in 
bitterness of spirit, " The deserters will be my ruin." 

Bavaria, threatened by the Allies and carried along by 
the torrent of German patriotism, was threatening Napo- 
leon's rear. The King of Wiirtemberg had honorably given 
notice that he also would be compelled to turn against the 
French. Saxony was moved by the same influences, and, 
in spite of the presence of her king in Leipsic, the Saxon 
troops felt the impulse of national passion. In the very 
hottest of the fight on the great day of the 18th, the Saxon 
infantry went over to Bernadotte, and turned their bat- 
teries upon the French. The Wiirtemberg cavalry fol- 
lowed. Then all was lost. The courage of the bravest, 
the skill of the ablest, sink before such odds as these. One 
account represents Napoleon as lifting a rage-swept face 
to heaven, with a cry of " Infamous ! " and then rushing 
at the head of the Old Guard to restore the broken line. 
Another story is that he sank into a wooden chair which 



538 NAPOLEON chap. 

some one handed him, and fell into the deep sleep of utter 
exhaustion. 

Bernadotte had commanded the Saxon troops for Napo- 
leon in the campaign of 1809. He had issued a proclama- 
tion, on his own motion, claiming credit for the victory of 
Wagram for these Saxons, and the Emperor reproved him 
for the untruth and the impertinence. Operating now 
against Napoleon, and in Saxony, Bernadotte had broad- 
casted the country with a proclamation calling upon the 
Saxons to join him. It is quite possible that the coinci- 
dence of these circumstances influenced the wavering 
troops, who had used half their ammunition against the 
Allies, to spend the other half against the French. 

This desertion of about twenty-five thousand men fur- 
nished one imperative reason for retreat ; but there seems 
to have been a second, equally good. Constant says, " In 
the evening the Emperor was sitting on a red morocco 
camp-stool amidst the bivouac fires, dictating orders for 
the night to Berthier, when two artillery commanders pre- 
sented themselves to his Majesty, and told him that they 
were nearly out of ammunition." Some two hundred and 
twenty-five thousand cannon balls had been fired, the re- 
serves were exhausted, and the nearest magazines were 
out of reach. 

The retreat began that night ; and troops continued to 
pour across the one bridge of the Elster as fast as they 
could go. Why was there but one bridge ? No satisfac- 
tory answer can be made, unless we adopt the theory of 
sheer neglect. The stream was so small that any number 
of bridges might have been built during the idle day of 
the 17th ; but no orders were issued, and the French army 
was left to fight awful odds, with a river at its back, 



XXXIX DRESDEN AND LEIPSIC 539 

over which laj the only line of retreat, and across which 
there was a single bridge. Did the Emperor forget the 
terrible experience of Aspern? Was he no longer the 
Napoleon of Rivoli, as Augereau was no longer the Auge- 
reau of Castiglione ? 

" Ordener is worn out," Napoleon remarked at Auster- 
litz. " One has but a short time for war. I am good for / 
another six years, and then I shall have to stop." 

Austerlitz was fought at the close of 1805; Leipsic 
toward the end of 1813: the great captain had already 
gone two years beyond his limit. 

The lean, wiry, tireless young general of the Italian 
campaign, who had fought Alvinczy five days without clos- 
ing his eyes or taking off his boots, could never be identified 
in the dull-faced, slow-moving, corpulent, and soon-wearied 
Emperor of 1813. 

Next morning, October 19, the Allies discovered that 
the French were in retreat, and this attack was renewed 
at all points with passionate energy. Napoleon left his 
bivouac, came into Leipsic, took up quarters in the hotel 
called The Prussian Arms. He went to the palace to take 
leave of the King and Queen of Saxony, who wished to 
follow his fortunes still. He advised them to stay and 
make the best terms possible with the Allies. He released 
his remaining Saxon troops. All day the retreat went 
on, the battle raging at the same time, the French rear- 
guard maintaining itself with superb courage. 

The magistrates of the town, fearing its utter destruc- 
tion, begged the Allies to suspend the cannonade till the 
French could get away. " Let Leipsic perish," answered 
the " Saviors of Germany " ; and the guns continued to 
roar. 



540 NAPOLEON chap. 

To protect his rear while the retreat was in progress, 
Napoleon was urged to fire the suburbs next to the allied 
lines. He nobly refused. 

What a horrible day it must have been ! The steady 
thunder of a thousand cannon ; the crackle of four hun- 
dred thousand muskets; the shouts of onset; the shrieks 
of the wounded ; the fierce crash of caissons and wagons ; 
the stormlike hurly-burly of countless men and horses, 
all wild with passion, all excited to the highest pitch of 
action, all crowding desperately toward the maddened 
town, the gorged, blood-stained streets — to reach the all- 
important bridge ! 

The world seemed ablaze with hatred for the fleeing 
French. The very body-guard of the Saxon king whirled 
upon their stricken allies, and poured deadly volleys into the 
retreating ranks. Even the cowardly Baden troop, which 
had been left in Leipsic by the French, to chop wood for 
the bakehouses, now laid aside their axes, and from the 
shelter of the bakeries shot down the French soldiers as 
they passed. 

The Emperor with difficulty had crossed the river, 
and given personal direction to the reunion of the various 
corps. The rear-guard was making heroic efforts to save 
the army ; and all was going as well as defeats and retreats 
can be expected to go, when suddenly there came a deaf- 
ening explosion which, for a moment, drowned the noise 
of battle. It roused Napoleon, who had fallen asleep ; 
and when Murat and Augereau came running to tell him 
that the bridge had been blown up and the rear-guard 
cut off, he seized his head convulsively in his hands, 
stunned by the awful news. 

The French officer, charged with the duty of destroy- 



xxxix DEESDEN AND LEIPSIC 541 

ing the bridge when the rear-guard should have passed, 
had touched off the mine too soon. 

The twenty odd thousand heroes who had been protect- 
ing the retreat, found themselves hemmed in — a swollen 
river in front, and three hundred thousand of the enemy 
in flank and rear. Some few dashed into the water and 
swam across, among them Marshal Macdonald. Some 
in attempting to swim were drowned, among them the 
golden-hearted, hero-patriot of Poland, Poniatowski. But 
the bulk of the rear-guard laid down their arms to the 
enemy. 

In the three days at Leipsic Napoleon lost 40,000 killed, 
30,000 prisoners, and 260 guns. The Allies lost in killed 
and wounded 54,000. 

The retreat from Leipsic was less horrible than that 
from Moscow, but it was dismal enough. Men died like 
flies from camp diseases; and those who kept the raijks 
were demoralized. 

At Erfurth, Murat left the army. The brothers-in-law 
embraced each other in the fervid French fashion, which 
looks so much and means so little. In this case it meant 
considerably less than nothing, for Murat had already 
decided to join the Allies, and Napoleon had issued orders 
to his minister of police to clap Murat into prison if he 
should set foot in France. Murat avoided the danger by 
getting to Naples by way of the right bank of the Rhine, 
and through Switzerland. 

Sadly shorn of his strength. Napoleon wended his way 
homeward, doing what he could to save the remnants of 
his army. So woe-begone was the condition of the French 
that Bavaria, upon which Napoleon had heaped immense 
favors, found itself unable to resist the temptation to give 



542 NAPOLEON 



CHAP. XXXIX 



the ass's kick to the expiring lion. At Hanau the kick was 
delivered, with sorry results for the ass. The mortally 
wounded lion swept the Bavarians out of his path and 
passed on, dragging himself across the Rhine at Mayence, 
November 2, 1813. 



CHAPTER XL 

T?ROM the Rhine to the Vistula the retreat of the 
French caused an outburst of joy. Nationalities and 
dynasties drew a mighty breath of relief. Peoples, as 
well as kings, had warred against French domination in 
1813; and peoples, rather than kings, had been Napole- 
on's ruin. Quickened into life by the French Revolu- 
tion, Germany had partially thrown feudalism off ; and, 
whereas in 1807 there had been no such political factor 
as a German people, in 1813 it was the all-powerful ele- 
ment of resistance to Napoleon. The German statesm'an 
outlined a people's programme, the German pamphleteer 
and agitator propagated it, the German poet inspired it, 
the German pulpit consecrated it, the German secret soci- 
ety organized it. There was the weapon; Spain had 
shown what could be done with it ; the kings had but to 
grasp and use it. Under its blows. Napoleon's strength 
steadily sank. 

Inspired by the German spirit, the allied armies rose 
after each defeat ready to fight again. Carried away by 
the current. Napoleon's German allies left his ranks and 
turned their guns upon him. Intimidated by its power, 
his trusty officers lost heart, lost nerve, lost judgment. 
Buoyed by its confidence, the kings had no fears, and 
rejected all compromise. Napoleon was barely across the 

543 



544 NAPOLEON chap. 

Rhine before his Rhenish confederation was a thing of 
the past, the kingdom of Westphalia a recollection, Je- 
rome Bonaparte a fugitive without a crown, the Saxon 
monarch a prisoner, Holland a revolted province, Polish 
independence and the Grand Duchy of Warsaw a van- 
ished dream. 

The " Saviors of Europe " had saved it. Napoleon's 
" cruel yoke " would vex Germany no more. To empha- 
size the fact, the " Saviors " levied upon the country a 
tribute of men and money, which just about doubled the 
weight of Napoleon's cruel yoke. 

Very heavy had been the hand of France during her 
ascendency. Very freely Napoleon had helped himself 
to such things in Germany as he needed. Very harshly 
had he put down all opposition to his will. And the 
French officers, imitating their chief, had plundered the 
land with insolent disregard of moderation or morality. 
From Jerome Bonaparte downward, Napoleon's repre- 
sentatives in Germany had been, as a rule, a scandal, a 
burden, an intolerable offence to German pride, German 
patriotism, and German pockets. It was with a furi- 
ous explosion of pent-up wrath that Germany at last arose 
and drove them out. 

Who was there to warn the peoples of the European 
states that they were blindly beating back the pioneers of 
progress, blindly combating the cause of liberalism, blindly 
doing the work of absolutism and privilege? Who would 
have hearkened to such a warning, had there been those 
wise enough and brave enough to have spoken ? Viewed 
upon the surface, the work Napoleon had done could not 
be separated from his mode of doing it. The methods 
were rough, sometimes brutal, always dictatorial. 



XL RETREAT FROM LEIPSIC 645 

People could see this, feel it, and resent it — just as 
they saw, felt, and resented his exactions of men, money, 
and war material. They could not, or did not, make due 
allowance for the man's ultimate purpose. They could 
not, or would not, realize how profoundly his code of 
laws and his system of administration worked for the final 
triumph of liberal principles. They could not, or would 
not, understand that there was then no way under heaven 
by which he could subdue the forces of feudalism, break 
the strength of aristocracy, and establish the equality of 
all men before the law, other than the method which he 
pursued. 

So the peoples in their folly made common cause with 
the kings, who promised them constitutions, civil and 
political liberty, and representative government. In their 
haste and their zeal, they ran to arms and laid their treas- 
ures at the feet of the kings. In their ardor and devotion, 
they marched and fought, endured and persisted, with an 
unselfish constancy which no trials, sufferings, or defeats 
could vanquish. 

They advanced to the attack with fierce shouts of joy ; 
on the retreat they were not cast down; reverses did not 
dampen their hopes nor shake their resolution. When the 
truce of Pleiswitz was granted, they welcomed it only as 
it gave them time to recuperate. When the Congress of 
Prague convened, they regarded it with dread, fearing that 
peace might be made and Napoleon left part-master of 
Germany. When the beacon lights blazed along the 
heights at midnight of August 10, they were hailed as 
slaves might hail the signals of deliverance. 

In his Memoirs, Metternich relates that when, after the 
battle of Leipsic, he entered the palace of the King of 
2w 



546 NAPOLEON chap. 

Saxony to notify him of the pleasure of the Allies, the 
Queen reproached him bitterly for having deserted Napo- 
leon's "sacred cause." Metternich states that he informed 
her that he had not come there to argue the question with 
her. 

And yet, if Metternich had any reply to make, then was 
the time to make it. The Queen's side of the case was 
weaker then than it would ever be again ; Metternich's 
stronger. Perfect as may have been the Queen's faith, it 
was beyond her power to pierce the curtain of the years, 
and see what lay in the future. Had the spirit of prophecy 
touched her lips, she would have been taken for a maniac, 
for this would have been her revelation : — 

" The promises the kings have made to the people will 
be broken ; the hope of the patriot will be dashed to 
the ground ; counter-revolution will set in ; and the 
shadow of absolutism will deepen over the world. The 
noble will again put on his boots and his spurs ; the peas- 
ant will once more dread the frown of his lord. The 
king will follow no law but that of his pleasure ; the 
priest will again avow that Jehovah is a Tory and a 
Jesuit. Reactionaries will drive out Napoleon's Code, 
and the revolutionary principles of civil equality. The 
prisons will be gorged with liberals ; on hundreds of 
gibbets democrats will rot. The Inquisition will come 
again, and the shrieks of the heretic will soothe the 
troubled conscience of the orthodox. Constitutions 
promised to peoples, and solemnly sworn to by kings, 
will be coldly set aside, and the heroes who demanded 
them will, by way of traitor's deaths, become martyrs to 
liberty. 

" Medisevalism will return ; statues of the Virgin will 



XL RETREAT FROM LEIPSIC 647 

weep, or wink, or sweat ; and miracles will refresh the 
faith of the righteous, bringing death to the scoffer 
who too boldly doubts. The press will be gagged, free 
speech denied, public assemblies made penal. The Jesuits 
will swarm as never before, monasteries and convents 
fill to overflowing, church wealth will multiply, and 
neither priest nor noble will pay tribute to the state. 
Clerical papers will demand the gallows for liberals, 
clericals will seize the schools, clericals will forbid all 
political writings. 

" The time will come when the European doctrine will 
again be proclaimed that the sovereign has full power 
over the lives and the property of his subjects. The 
time will come when this same Emperor Francis will 
publicly admonish the Laybach professors that they are 
not to teach the youth of Germany too much : — ' I do not 
want learned men ! I want obedient men ! ' 

" The time will come when in Bourbon France the work 
of the Revolution will be set aside by the stroke of the 
pen, and absolute government decreed again. Even in 
England, free speech attempted at a public meeting will 
bring out the troops who will charge upon a mixed and 
unarmed multitude, wounding and slaying with a bru- 
tality born of bigoted royalism and class-tyranny. The 
cry for reform there will challenge such resistance that 
Wellington will hold his army ready to massacre English 
people. 

" The time will come when these three kings — Alexan- 
der, Francis, and Frederick William — will form their Holy 
Alliance in the interest of aristocracy, hereditary privilege, 
clerical tyranny, and absolute royalty. By force of arms 
they will crush democracy wherever it appears ; they will 



548 NAPOLEON chap. 

bring upon Europe a reign of terror; and the cause of 
human progress will seem to be lost forever. 

" And as for you, Prince Metternich, the time will come 
when you will have been so identified with the oppressors 
of the people, so well known as their busy tool, their heart- 
less advocate, their pitiless executioner, their polished liar, 
hypocrite, and comprehensive knave, that a minister of 
state will proclaim amid universal applause, ' I sum up the 
infamy of the last decades in the name of Metternich ! ' " 

All this might the Queen of Saxony have said to her 
insolent tormentor ; for all this is literal truth. In the 
light of history the woman was right : Napoleon's was the 
" sacred cause." 



When the Emperor reached Paris, his situation was as 
trying as any mortal was ever called upon to face. Not 
a legitimate king like Alexander, Frederick William, or 
Francis, his power could not rally from shocks which 
theirs had so easily survived. Great as had been his 
genius for construction, he could not give to his empire 
the solidity and sanctity which comes from age. He 
could create orders of nobility, and judicial, legislative, 
and executive systems ; he could erect a throne, establish 
a dynasty, and surround it with a court ; but he could not 
so consecrate it with the mysterious benediction of time 
that it would defy adversity, and stand of its own strength 
amid storms which levelled all around it. 

The great Frederick and the small Frederick William 
remained the centre of Prussian hopes, Prussian loyalty, 
Prussian efforts even when Berlin was in the hands of the 
enemy, the army scattered in defeat, and the King almost 



XL RETREAT FROM LEIPSIC 649 

a fugitive. Prussia, in all her battles, fought for the King ; 
in her defeats, mourned with the King ; in her resurrection 
from disaster, rallied round the King. 

Austria had done the same. Her Emperor Francis had 
as little real manhood in him as any potentate that ever 
complacently repeated the formula of "God and I." He 
was weak in war and in peace ; in the head, empty ; in 
the heart, waxy and cold ; in the spirit, selfish, false, 
cowardly, and unscrupulous. Yet when this man's unpro- 
voked attacks upon Napoleon had brought Austria to her 
shame and sorrow, — cities burnt, fields wasted, armies 
destroyed, woe in every house for lives lost in battle, — 
Austria knew no rallying-point other than Francis ; and 
when the poor creature came back to Vienna, after Napo- 
leon had granted him peace, all classes met him with 
admiration, love, loyalty, and enthusiasm. Napoleon, re- 
turning to France victorious, was not more joyously 
acclaimed by the French than was this defeated and 
despoiled Francis applauded in Vienna. 

The one was a legitimate king, the other was not. On 
the side of Francis and the Fredericks were time, training, 
habit, and system. Germans were born into the system, 
educated to it, practised in it, and died out of it — to be 
succeeded by generations who knew nothing but to follow 
in the footsteps of those that had gone before. 

In France the old order had been overthrown and the 
new had not so completely identified itself with Napoleon 
that he could exert the tremendous force which antiquity 
and custom lend to institutions. 

Nevertheless, the truth seems to be that in his last 
struggles Napoleon had the masses with him. Had he 
made a direct appeal to the peasantry and to the workmen 



550 NAPOLEON chap 

of the cities, mere is every reason to believe that he could 
have enrolled a million men. The population in France 
was not at a standstill then as it is now. It was steadily 
on the increase ; and it was fairly prosperous, and fairly 
contented. The Emperor had given special attention to 
agriculture and manufactures. In every possible way he 
had encouraged both, and his efforts had borne fruit. He 
had not increased the taxes, he had not burdened the 
State with loans, he had not issued paper money, he had 
not even changed the conscription laws. In some of his 
campaigns he had called for recruits before they were 
legally due ; but, as the Senate had sanctioned the call, 
the nation had acquiesced. It is true that men and boys 
had dodged the enrolling officers, and that the numbers 
of those who defied and resisted the conscriptions had 
increased to many thousands ; but the meaning of this 
was nothing more than that the people were tired of dis- 
tant wars. 

A pledge from the Emperor that soldiers should not be 
sent out of France would apparently have rallied to him 
the full military support of the nation. But Napoleon 
could not get his own consent to arm the peasants and 
the artisans. Both in 1814 and in 1815 that one chance 
of salvation was offered to him ; in each year he rejected 
it. 

The awful scenes of the Revolution which he had wit- 
nessed had left him the legacy of morbid dread of mobs. 
The soldier who could gaze stolidly upon the frightful 
rout at Leipsic, where men were perishing in the wild 
storm of battle by the tens of thousands, could never free 
himself from the recollection of the Parisian rabble which 
had slaughtered a few hundreds. At Moscow he refused 



XL RETREAT FROM LEIPSIC 561 

to arm the serfs against their masters ; in France he as 
deliberately rejected all proposals to appeal to the lower 
orders to support his throne. 

The secret is revealed by his question, " Who can tell 
me what spirit will animate these men ? " He feared for 
his dynasty, dreading a republic in which free elections 
would control the choice of the executive. 

But while the mass of the French people remained 
loyal to Napoleon, the upper classes were divided. There 
had always been a leaven of royalism in the land, and 
Napoleon himself had immensely strengthened its influ- 
ence. Bringing back the emigres, restoring hereditary es- 
tates, creating orders of nobility anew, and establishing 
royal forms, he had been educating the country up to 
monarchy as no one else could have done — had been 
"making up the bed for the Bourbons." The ancient 
nobility, as a rule, had secretly scorned him as a Corsican 
parvenu, even while crowding his antechambers and load- 
ing themselves with his favors. Now that reverses had 
commenced, their eyes began to turn to their old masters, 
the Bourbons, and the hopes of a restoration and a coun- 
ter-revolution began to take distinct shape in Paris itself. 

To the royalists, also, went the support of a large num- 
ber of the rich — men who resented the income tax of 
twenty-five per cent, which Napoleon at this time felt it 
necessary to impose upon them. Another grudge, they, 
the rich, had against him : he would not allow them to 
loot his treasury, as the rich were doing in England. 
Nor would he grant exemptions from any sort of public 
burden, special privilege being in his eyes a thing 
utterly abominable. Hence, such men as the great 
banker Laffitte were not his friends. 



552 NAPOLEON chap. 

There was another element of opposition which made 
itself felt at this crisis. There were various contractors, 
and other public employees, who had taken advantage of 
the decline of Napoleon's power to plunder, embezzle, and 
cheat. The Emperor was on the track of numbers of 
these men, and in his wrath had sworn to bring them to 
judgment. "Never will I pardon those who squander 
public funds ! " These men moved in upper circles, and 
had many social, political, and financial allies. Dreading 
punishment if Napoleon held his throne, they became 
active partisans of the Bourbon restoration. Even his 
old schoolmate, Bourrienne, his private secretary of 
many years, betrayed him shamelessly. The Emperor 
had detected the fact that Bourrienne had been using his 
official position for private gain, and had dismissed him ; 
but on account of old association had softened the fall 
by appointing him Consul at Hamburg. At this place 
Bourrienne amassed a fortune by violating the Continen- 
tal system, and he now hated the man he had betrayed, 
and from whom he feared punishment. This was but one 
case among hundreds. 

Then, there was the Talleyrand, Fouche, Remusat, 
Abbe Louis, Abbe Montesquieu, Due de Dalberg sort. 
Talleyrand had been enriched, ennobled, imperially pam- 
pered, but never trusted. Napoleon had borne with his 
venalities and treacheries until men marvelled at his for- 
bearance. This minister of France was in the pay of 
Austria, of Russia, of England, of any foe of France who 
could pay the price. It was probably he who sold to 
England the secret of Tilsit. It was certainly he who 
conspired with the Czar against Napoleon, and took a 
bribe from Austria every time she needed mercy from 



XL RETREAT FROM LEIPSIC 563 

France. It was he who extorted tribute from Napoleon's 
allies at the same time that he sold state secrets to Napo- 
leon's foes. Denounced and dismissed, and then employed 
again, this man was ripe for a greater betrayal than he 
had yet made, and he now believed that the opportunity 
was close at hand. 

Fouche, also, had been Napoleon's minister. Napoleon's 
Duke of Otranto. Dabbling in conspiracies of all sorts, 
and venturing upon a direct intrigue with England, Na- 
poleon had disgraced him, instead of having him shot. 
Needing him again, the Emperor had reemployed him, 
thereby affording another rancorous foe his chance to 
strike when the time should come. 

In the army there, was the same grand division of sen- 
timent, — the rank and file being devoted to Napoleon, the 
officers divided. 

The marshals were tired of war, there being nothing 
further in it for them. They had been lifted as high as 
they could go ; they had been enriched to satiety ; their 
fame was established. Why should they continue to 
fight ? Were they never to be left in peace ? What was 
the good of having wealth if they were never to enjoy it ? 

The marshals were human ; their grumblings and 
growlings most natural. They honestly believed that 
peace depended upon the Emperor alone, that he only had 
to stretch forth his hand to get it. 

He himself knew better ; but it almost maddened him 
to realize that so few understood this as he did. 

" Peace ! peace ! " he cried impatiently, to Berthier 

the goose. " You miserable ! Don't you know 

that I want peace more than any one ? How am I to get 
it ? The more I concede, the more they demand ! " 



664 NAPOLEON chap. 

This brings us squarely to the question : Did the Allies, 
in good faith, offer Napoleon peace, and did he recklessly 
refuse it ? 

Then and afterward he contended that he had done 
everything in his power to secure honorable terms. Al- 
most with his dying breath he repeated this statement at 
St. Helena. What is the truth about it? 

Let any one who wishes to know, study the Memoirs of 
the period ; let him further study the despatches and 
treaties of the Allies ; let him give due weight to the in- 
fluence upon these Allies of the Bourbons, the ancient 
nobility, the higher priests of the Catholic Church, the 
dynastic prejudices of the allied kings, and the intense 
personal hatreds of such powerful counsellors of kings as 
Pozzo di Borgo, Stein, Bernadotte, Castlereagh, and Tal- 
leyrand. In addition to this, let such a student consider 
how the Allies violated the armistice of Pleiswitz, the ca- 
pitulations of Dantzic and Dresden, the treaties they made 
with Napoleon in 1812, and that which they made with 
him at his abdication in 1814. 

Let such a student furthermore consider that these 
Allies not only broke the treaty they made with Napoleon 
in 1814, but likewise violated the pledges which they had 
made to their own peoples in drawing them into the war. 

If, after the study of these evidences of the bad faith of 
the Allies, there still remains doubt, the Memoirs of Met- 
ternich will remove it — if it be removable. 

The world knows that the only avowed purpose of the 
Allies was to liberate Europe by driving Napoleon back 
beyond the Rhine, and that this end had now been attained. 
Hence, if the real objects the Allies had in view were those 
which had been made public, why should not the war have 



XL RETREAT FROM LEIPSIC 655 

ceased? Europe was free, Napoleon's empire shattered, 
nothing remained to him but France — why should the 
Allies follow him there ? It was necessary to hoodwink 
the world upon this point, and it was Metternich's task to 
do it ; — for the allied kings were determined to invade 
France and put an end to Napoleon's political existence. 
Metternich avows this himself; yet he persuaded them 
to make to Napoleon the celebrated Frankfort Proposals. 
All the world knows that the allied kings, with an apparent 
excess of magnanimity, offered even then to come to such 
terms with Napoleon as would have left him in possession 
of the France of 1792, a larger realm than the greatest of 
Bourbon kings had ever ruled. What the world did not 
know was that these Frankfort Proposals were not sincere, 
and were made for effect only. It was necessary to the 
Allies to cover their own designs, to justify their departure 
from the declarations of 1813, to create the impression 
that they themselves favored peace while Napoleon per- 
sisted in war. Succeeding in this, they would cut the 
ground from under his feet, divide the French, and deprive 
him of enthusiastic and united national support. With 
profound policy and duplicity, they sought to create in 
France itself the impression that Napoleon was the only 
obstacle to peace, and that their efforts were aimed at him, 
and not at France, her institutions, her principles, or her 
glory. Not for a moment was France given cause to 
suspect that the Bourbons were to be forced upon her, 
and the great work of the Revolution partially undone. 
Not for a moment was she allowed to realize that offers 
of peace to Napoleon were deceptive — intended only to 
embarrass him and to divide his people. Yet Metternich 
himself admits that the Frankfort Proposals were made 



656 NAPOLEON chap, m 

for effect — not only admits it, but takes credit for it. 
He states that he was compelled to exert all his influence 
with the allied sovereigns to secure their consent to these 
proposals, and that he overcame their resistance, as he had 
overcome Alexander's in 1813, by assuring them that the 
offers would come to nothing. 



CHAPTER XLI 

TTAD Napoleon promptly accepted the Frankfort Propos- 
als as they were made, would he have secured peace ? 
Manifestly not, for Metternich had put two conditions to 
his offer which do not look pacific. First, the war was 
not to be suspended during negotiations. Second, the 
Frankfort Proposals were only to be taken as bases upon 
which diplomats could work. Does this look like a bona 
fide offer of peace ? Napoleon thought not, and impartial 
history must hesitate long before saying he erred. When 
in December, 1813, he sent his envoy to the Allies, agree- 
ing to all they demanded, he was once more told that he 
should have consented sooner. The Allies had gained 
their point in having made the offer, and their active 
interest in the matter was at an end. The French envoy 
was kept in hand, seeking audiences and positive replies, 
while the allied armies marched into France. 

France in 1814 was a nation of about thirty million 
souls. During the years 1812 and 1813 she had furnished 
nearly six hundred thousand soldiers to Napoleon's armies. 
Of these about half were prisoners in Russia and Ger- 
many, or were shut up in distant garrisons ; about two 
hundred thousand were dead or missing ; about one 
hundred thousand remained subject to the Emperor's 
call. It was his hope that further conscription would 

557 



668 NAPOLEON chap. 

yield him three hundred thousand recruits ; but it failed 
to do so. 

So much war material had been lost in the campaigns 
in Russia and Saxony that he could not furnish muskets 
to volunteers ; some went to war armed with shot-guns. 
Neither could he mount any large force of cavalry ; horses 
could not be had. Nor were there uniforms for all ; some 
went to the front in sabots and blouse. Money was lack- 
ing, and the Emperor took more than 110,000,000 from 
his own private funds (saved from his Civil List), and 
threw them into the equipment of the troops, calling also 
upon the rich for voluntary contributions, on a sliding 
scale which he was thoughtful enough to furnish. A few 
of the taxes were increased, the communal lands taken 
for the public service, and paper money issued against the 
value of this particular property. 

Competent judges have expressed the opinion that had 
Napoleon at this time liberated the Pope and Ferdinand of 
Spain, and done so unconditionally, he might have won in 
the campaign which was about to open. The release of 
the Pope might have brought back to allegiance many 
of the disaffected ; the release of Ferdinand might have 
made it necessary for the English to quit Spain, and in 
this manner Napoleon would have drawn to his own sub- 
port the veterans he still kept there. The Duke of Wel- 
lington is quoted as saying that had Ferdinand appeared 
in Spain in December, 1813, the English would have had 
to evacuate it. He, of all men, should have known. 

But Napoleon would not consent to make uncondi- 
tional surrender to the Pope or to Ferdinand. He 
patched up a peace with the latter, which, being a half- 
way measure, yielded no benefit ; and as to the Pope, 



,:: THE FRANKFORT PROPOSALS 559 

the Holy Father refused to treat on any terms with his 
"son in Christ Jesus." Restore him to Rome first ; then 
he would treat. 

From the time Napoleon returned from Saxony till he 
left Paris to take charge of his last campaign, less than 
three months passed. 

There was never a time when he labored with greater 
; atience or exhibited greater fortitude, courage, and 
determination. But the evidence seems to indicate that 
he had lost hope, that he was conscious of the fact that 
nothing less than a miracle could save him. 

Ever since the Russian campaign, he had not had the 
same confidence in his star. As he set out from St. 
Cloud for his campaign in Saxony he said to Caulain- 
court : " I envy the lot of the meanest peasant of my 
empire. At my age he has discharged his debts to the 
country and remains at home, enjoying the society of his 
wife and children ; while I — I must fly to the camp and 
throw myself into the struggles of war." 

Meneval states that in private he found the Emperor 
"careworn, though he did his best to hide his anxiety." 

" But in public his face was calm and reassured. In 
our conversations he used to complain of feeling tired 
of war and of no longer being able to endure horse 
exercise. He reproached me in jest with having fine 
times, whilst he painfully dragged his plough." 

Is there anything which is more pathetic and which 
shows how grandly Napoleon towered above the small 
men who were tugging to pull him down than his rebuke 
to the intriguers of the legislative body ? 

At the head of a disloyal faction there, M. Laine — an 
old Girondin, now a royalist, who was soon to set up the 



Kf/"^ 



660 NAPOLEON char 

Bourbon standard at Bordeaux — started a movement 
which was meant to give aid to the Allies by showing 
that divisions existed in France, and by forming a nucleus 
of Bourbon opposition. A committee, which Laine con- 
trolled, made a report in which Napoleon's government 
was impliedly censured, and reforms demanded. Follow- 
ing this lead, others in the legislative body clamored for 
the acceptance of the Frankfort Proposals. 

This movement of opposition in the legislative body, 
at a time when half a million men were on the march to 
invade France, was nothing short of treason. At such a 
crisis, the dullest of Frenchmen must have understood 
that obstruction to Napoleon was comfort to the enemy. 

Even the cold Pasquier admits that the Emperor's 
words to these men were "somewhat touching." 

Having reproved the committee for allowing Laine, 
the royalist, to lead them astray. Napoleon said ; " I 
stood in need of something to console me, and you have 
sought to dishonor me. I was expecting that you would 
unite in mind and deed to drive out the foreigner. You 
have bidden him come ! Indeed, had I lost two battles, 
it would not have done France greater harm." 

Somewhat touching, Chancellor Pasquier ? Ah, if ever 
the great man was heard to sob in public, it was here ! 
A nobler grief, and a nobler expression of it, history has 
seldom recorded. 

In the course of the same talk, the indignant Emperor 
reminded the legislators that whatever differences existed 
between him and them should have been discussed in 
private. " Dirty linen should not be washed in public." 
Then hurried away by angry impatience at those who 
were forever prating about the sacrifices he exacted of 



XLi THE FKANKFORT PROPOSALS 561 

France, he exclaimed, "France has more need of me than 
I of France." This was true, but the statement was 
imprudent ; and his enemies at once misconstrued his 
meaning, and used the remark to his damage. He dis- 
missed the legislative body fearing, doubtless, that while 
he was at the head of the army the royalists of the cham- 
ber might become a danger in his rear. 

Blow after blow fell upon the defeated Emperor during 
the closing weeks of 1813. St. Cyr gave up Dresden, and 
Rapp surrendered Dantzic, upon condition that their troops 
should be allowed to return to France. The Allies set 
aside the conditions, and held the garrisons as prisoners 
of war. 

Constant relates two incidents which reveal Napoleon's 
melancholy more fully than his words to Meneval or to 
the legislative body. 

The Emperor went about Paris more informally than 
he had ever done. Sometimes on horseback, sometimes 
on foot, he went to inspect his public works, schools, and 
hospitals. Apparently he was curious to feel the public 
pulse. Constant says that the people cheered him, and 
that sometimes great multitudes followed him back to the 
Tuileries. The time had been when the Emperor had 
not paid any special heed to the shouts of a street mob. 
Now the cry of enthusiasm was music to his ears. After 
one of these episodes the Emperor would return to the 
palace in high spirits, would have much to say to his 
valet that night, and would be " very gay." 

In his visits to Saint-Denis (Girl's School of the Legion 
of Honor) the Emperor was usually accompanied by two 
pages. " Now it happened in the evening," writes Con- 
stant, "that the Emperor, after returning from Saint- 
2o 



662 NAPOLEON cnxv. 

Denis, said to me with a laugh on entering his chamber, 
where I was waiting to undress him, ' Well, well, here are 
my pages trying to resemble the ancient pages. The lit- 
tle rogues ! Do you know what they do ? When I go to 
Saint-Denis they wrangle with each other as to who shall 
go with me.' As he spoke, the Emperor was laughing 
and rubbing his hands, and repeated in the same tone 
a number of times, ' The little rogues.' " 

Would Chancellor Pasquier admit that this was also 
" somewhat touching " ? 

The greatest man of all history had said with proud 
mournfulness, " I stood in need of something to console 
me," and we do not realize how infinitely sad he was till 
we read in Constant's artless narrative that the shouts of 
the mob made him " very gay," and that the dispute of the 
boys in the palace as to which two should go out into 
the town with him made him rub his hands with pleasure, 
and repeat time and again, "Ah, the little rogues." 



At the beginning of 1814 positive information came 
that Murat had made a treaty with Austria, and had 
promised an armj'^ of thirty thousand men to cooperate 
with the Allies against France. Much as this defection 
must have wounded the Emperor, the worst part of it was 
that he knew his sister Caroline to be more to blame than 
Murat. She did not believe that the Allies meant to de- 
throne Napoleon ; she believed he could make peace on 
the basis of the Frankfort Proposals ; and to save her 
own crown she believed that a treaty with the Allies was 
necessary. To this extent her treachery can be palliated 
— excuse for it there is none. 




^Uc^tKy^yCy /^'''hy--^ ^C«-«''^5&*:*>- 

LETTER TO COUNTESS WALEWSKI, APRIL l6, 1814.^ 




XLi THE FRANKFORT PROPOSALS 563 

This defection was the crudest blow of all ; for Murat 
had been promising his support, and the Emperor had 
based his plan of campaign upon it. He had intended 
that Eugene should unite his forces to those of Murat, and 
that the two should fall upon the Austrian line of com- 
munications, threatening Vienna. From this plan he had 
expected the happiest results. 

Murat had been negotiating with England and Austria, 
but had not definitely made terms. It is said that he was 
driven to a decision by a wound which Napoleon inflicted 
upon his vanity. Murat, having written the Emperor that 
he could bring thirty thousand men to the field to aid 
France, was told to send the troops to Pavia, where they 
would receive "the Emperor's orders." The King of Na- 
ples received this letter on a day when, with the Queen 
and others, he was making a visit to Pompeii. He was 
so much hurt by Napoleon's tone that he tore the despatch 
in pieces, trampled on the fragments, and returned to 
Naples to close with the Austrian offers. 

One must pity this brave, vain, fickle Murat, urged on 
to his shame and ruin by his innate levity of character, 
the sting of wounded vanity, the selfish promptings of 
an ambitious wife, and the temptings of professional 
diplomats- 
England dug the grave for Murat as she did for Napo- 
leon, her agent at Naples being Lord Bentinck. Murat 
having sent the Englishman a sword of honor, the latter 
wrote to his government : — 

" It is a severe violence to my feelings to incur any 
degree of obligation to an individual whom I so deeply 
despise. " 

On the same day he wrote to Murat : " The sword of a 



564 NAPOLEON chap. 

great captain is the most flattering compliment which a 
soldier can receive. It is with the highest gratitude that 
I accept, sire, the gift which you have done me the honor 
to send." 

Lord Bentinck belonged, we must presume, to what 
Lord Wolseley calls " the highest type of English gentle- 
man " ; hence his duplicity must not be spoken of in the 
terms we use in denouncing the vulgar. 

Another piece of bad luck had happened to the Em- 
peror since the Saxon campaign — his two brothers, 
Joseph and Jerome, were in France. Wellington had not 
left the former much to resign in Spain ; but whatever 
there was, Joseph had surrendered it, and he had come 
away. He was now in Paris, confident as ever of his 
own great merits, and most unfortunately exercising his 
former evil influence. Napoleon made this imbecile 
Lieutenant- General of the kingdom, and having made 
the Empress regent, Joseph became President of the 
Council of Regency. The disastrous consequences of 
putting such power into Joseph's hands will be seen 
presently. 

At length everything which human effort and human 
genius could achieve for the national defence, in so short 
a time, was done ; and it became imperative that the 
Emperor should join his army. 

On Sunday of January 23, 1814, it being known that 
he would leave Paris in a few hours, the ofiicers of the 
twelve legions of the National Guard assembled in the 
hall of the marshals, at the Tuileries, to be presented as 
the Emperor should return from Mass. Presently he 
came ; and while the Empress stood at his side, he took 
his little son in his arms, and presented him to the brill- 



XL! . THE FRANKFORT PROPOSALS 665 

iant throng. In a voice which revealed his deep feeling, 
he told them that he was about to leave Paris to put him- 
self at the head of the army to drive the invaders from 
France, and he reckoned on the zeal of all good citizens. 
He appealed to them to be united, and to repel all insinu- 
ations which would tend to divisions. " Efforts will not 
be lacking to shake your fidelity to your duties ; I rely 
on you to reject these perfidious attempts. Gentlemen, 
officers of the National Guard, I put under your protection 
what, next to France, is dearest to me in all the world, — 
my wife and my son ! " 

Even Pasquier records that these words were uttered 
in tones which went to the heart, and with an expression 
of face that was noble and touching. " I saw tears course 
down many a cheek. All swore by acclamation to be 
worthy of the confidence with which they were being 
honored, and every one of them took this oath in all 
sincerity." Warming up a little, in spite of himself, the 
Chancellor adds, "This powerful sovereign in the toils 
of adversity, this glorious soldier bearing up against the 
buffets of fortune, could but deeply stir souls when, appeal- 
ing to the most cherished affections of the human heart, 
he placed himself under their protection." The learned 
Chancellor frostily adds that " the capital did not remain 
indifferent to this scene, and was more deeply moved by 
it than one might expect." 

Let us get out of this draught of wind from the frozen 
summits of eminent respectability, and turn to a man 
whose heart-beat had not been chilled in any social or 
judicial ice-box. 

Constant writes : — 

"... The Emperor's glance rested on the Empress and 



666 NAPOLEON char 

on the King of Rome. He added in a voice that betrayed 
emotion, indicating by look and gesture his son, ' I con- 
fide him to you, gentlemen ! ' At these words, a thousand 
cries, a thousand arms arose, swearing to guard this pre- 
cious trust. The Empress, bathed in tears, would have 
fallen if the Emperor had not caught her in his arms. 
At this sight the enthusiasm reached its climax ; tears 
fell from every eye, and there was not one of the specta- 
tors who did not seem ready to shed his blood for the 
imperial family." 

At the beginning of 1814 France was threatened by 
four armies, aggregating half a million men. Wellington 
was at the Pyrenees in the south, Bernadotte was in the 
Netherlands, while Bliicher and Schwarzenberg, crossing 
the Rhine higher up, but at different points, were march- 
ing upon Paris by the Seine and the Marne. 

With a confidence which events justified, the Emperor 
left Soult to oppose Wellington. As to Bernadotte, he 
was neither trusted by the Allies nor feared by Napoleon. 
The recreant Frenchman had merely come to terms with 
the Allies because they had promised to take Norway from 
Denmark and give it to Sweden. In addition to this, the 
Czar of Russia had dangled before Bernadotte's eyes, as a 
tempting bait, the crown of France — a fact which of 
itself proves the hollowness of the overtures made to Napo- 
leon from Frankfort. So well was the crafty Prince-Royal 
of Sweden understood by those who had bought him, that 
he was kept under strict personal surveillance by each of 
the four great allied powers, — Russia, Austria, Prussia, 
and Great Britain. From an army led by such a man. 
Napoleon had little to fear ; and he gave his whole personal 



XM THE FRANKFORT PROPOSALS 567 

energies to Bliicher and Scliwarzenberg, especially to 
Bliicher. This old hussar who had served under Fred- 
erick the Great, and who was now more than seventy- 
years of age, was the most energetic of all the officers 
arrayed against France ; and he gave Napoleon more 
trouble than all the others put together. He could easily 
be outgeneralled, he could be beaten any number of times 
by such a captain as Napoleon ; but there was no such 
thing as conquering him. Routed one day, he was ready 
to fight again the next. Outmanoeuvred at one point, he 
turned up ready for battle at another. His marches were 
swift, his resources inexhaustible, his pluck and determi- 
nation an inspiration, not only to the Prussians, but to all 
the allied armies. He was not much of a general, was 
a good deal of a brute ; but he was about as well fitted 
for the task of wearing down Napoleon's strength as any 
officer Europe could have put into the field. 

Moving slowly from the Rhine toward Paris, meeting 
no resistance which could hinder their march, the Allies, 
who were making war upon Napoleon alone, and who had 
no grudge against France, and whose wish it was, as they 
proclaimed, to see France "great, prosperous, and happy," 
gave rein to such license, committed such havoc upon prop- 
erty, and such riotous outrage upon man, woman, and child, 
that the details cannot be printed. In Spain, Napoleon had 
shot his own soldiers to put an end to pillage ; in Russia 
he had done the same. At Leipsic he had refused to burn 
the suburbs to save his army. In his invasions of Prus- 
sia and Austria he had held his men so well in hand 
that non-combatants were almost as safe, personally, as 
they had been under their own king. At Berlin the 
French Emperor publicly disgraced a prominent French 



568 NAPOLEON chap. 

officer for having written an insulting letter to a German 
lady. 

In France the sovereigns whose every proclamation 
and treaty ran under the sanctimonious heading, " In the 
name of the Holy and Indivisible Trinity," let loose upon 
the country savage hordes of Cossacks, Croats, and Prus- 
sian fanatics who wreaked their vengeance upon the non- 
combatant peasantry and villagers until the invasion of 
the " Saviors of Society " became a saturnalia of lust and 
blood and arson, which no language fit for books can 
describe. 

The Prussians had almost reached Brienne when the 
Emperor took the field with a small force, and drove 
them from St. Dizier. He then came upon Bliicher at 
Brienne, suddenly, while the Prussian general was feast- 
ing at the chateau, and captured one of the higher officers 
at the foot of the stairs. The Emperor believed he 
had nabbed Bliicher himself, and he shouted, "We will 
hold on to that old fighter ; the campaign will not last 
long ! " 

But Bliicher had fled through the back door, and had 
escaped. The battle raged over the school grounds and 
the park where Napoleon had read and meditated in his 
boyhood. During the fight he found himself storming 
the school buildings, where the Prussians were posted ; 
and he pointed out to his companions the tree in the park 
under which he had read Jerusalem Delivered. 

One of the guides in the movement about Brienne was 
a cure who had been a regent of the college while Napo- 
leon was there. They recognized each other, the Em- 
peror exclaiming : " What ! is this you, my dear master ? 
Then you have never quitted this region ? So much the 



XM THE FRANKFORT PROPOSALS 669 

better ; you "will be more able to serve the country's 
cause." 

The cure saddled his mare and took his place cheerfully 
in the imperial staff, saying, " Sire, I could find my way 
over the neighborhood with my eyes shut." 

The Emperor drove the Prussians from Brienne with 
heavy loss ; but when Bliicher joined Schwarzenberg, and 
Napoleon with his slender force attacked this huge mass 
at La Rothiere, he was beaten off, after a desperate com- 
bat. 

Riding back to the chateau of Brienne to spend the 
night, the Emperor was suddenlj^ assailed by a swarm of 
Cossacks, and for a moment he was in great personal 
danger ; so much so that he drew his sword to defend 
himself. A Cossack lunged at him with a lance, and 
was shot down by General Gourgaud. 

This incident gave Gourgaud a claim upon Napoleon 
which was heard of frequently afterward, — rather too 
frequently, as the Emperor thought. At St. Helena 
Gourgaud, a fretful man and a jealous, tortured himself 
and his master by too many complaints of neglect ; and 
reminded the Emperor once too often of the pistol-shot 
which had slain the Cossack. 

"I saw nothing of it," said Napoleon, thus putting a 
quietus to that particularly frequent conversational nui- 
sance. 

It was now the 1st of February, 1814 ; the Emperor 
fell back to Nogent, the Austrians following. Bliicher 
separated from Schwarzenberg, divided his army into 
small detachments, and made straight for Paris. In a 
flash Napoleon saw his advantage, and acted. At Champ- 
Aubert he fell upon one of these scattered divisions and 



570 NAPOLEON chap, xli 

destroyed it. At Montmirail he crushed another ; and 
hurling his victorious little army upon Bliicher himself, 
drove that astonished old warrior back upon Chalons. 
Putting his guard into carts and carriages, and posting 
at the highest speed night and day. Napoleon united 
with Marshals Oudinot, Victor, and Macdonald at Guignes. 
On February 18 he fell upon the huge army of Schwarzen- 
berg at Montereau and actually drove it back toward 
Troyes, — the Austrians as they retired calling upon old 
Bliicher to come and give them help ! 

When Caulaincourt, early in December, 1813, had ap- 
peared at Frankfort ready to accept those famous propo- 
sals unconditionally, Metternich had shuffled, evaded, and 
procrastinated. Finally, a Peace Congress was assembled 
at Chatillon (February 6, 1814) ; and while the soldiers 
marched and fought, the diplomats ate, drank and made 
themselves merry in the farce of trying to arrange a 
treaty. Caulaincourt, gallant and hospitable, supplied his 
brother diplomats at Chatillon with all the good things 
which Paris could furnish, — good eatables, good drink- 
ables, and gay women. Hence, the Peace Congress was a 
very enjoyable affair, indeed. It was not expected to do 
anything, and it fully came up to expectations. As the 
tide of success veered, so shifted the diplomats. When 
the Allies won a victory, their demands advanced ; when 
Napoleon won, the demands moderated. There was no 
such thing as a coming together. 



CHAPTER XLII 

A FTER his defeat at La Rothiere, the Emperor author- 
ized Bassano to make peace, giving to Caulaincourt 
unlimited powers. But before the necessary papers could 
be signed, Bliicher had made his false movement, and 
Napoleon's hopes had risen. Bassano, entering his room 
on the morning of February 9, found the Emperor lying 
on his map and planting his wax-headed pins. 

" Ah, it is you, is it ? " cried he to Bassano, who held the 
papers in his hands ready for signing. " There is no more 
question of that. See here, I want to thrash Bliicher. He 
has taken the Montmirail road. I shall fight him to-morrow 
and next day. The face of affairs is about to change. 
We will wait." 

In the movements which followed the Bonaparte of the 
Italian campaign was seen again, and for the last time. 
He was everywhere, he was tireless, he was inspiring, he 
was faultless, he was a terror to his foes. We see him 
heading charges with reckless dash, see him aiming can- 
non in the batteries, see him showing his recruits how to 
build bridges, see him check a panic by spurring his own 
horse up to a live shell and holding him there till the 
bomb exploded, see him rallying fugitives, on foot and 
sword in hand. We hear him appeal to his tardy marshals 
to "Pull on the boots and the resolution of 1793"; we 

571 



572 NAPOLEON chap. 

hear liim address the people and the troops with the mili- 
tary eloquence of his best days ; we see him writing all 
night after marching or fighting all day — his care and his 
efforts embracing everything, and achieving all that was 
possible to man. 

That was a pretty picture at the crossing of the river 
Aube, where Napoleon was making a hasty bridge out 
of ladders spliced together, floored with blinds taken 
from the houses near by. Balls were tearing up the 
ground where the Emperor stood; but yet when he 
was about to quench his extreme thirst by dipping up in 
his hands the water of the river, a little girl of the 
village, seeing his need, ran to him with a glass of wine. 
Empire was slipping away from him, and his mind 
must have been weighed down by a thousand cares ; but 
he was so touched by the gallantry of the little maid that 
he smiled down upon her, as he gratefully drank, and he 
said : — 

" Mademoiselle, you would make a brave soldier ! " 

Then he added playfully, " Will you take the epaulets? 
Will you be my aide-de-camp ? " He gave her his hand, 
which she kissed, and as she turned to go he added, " Come 
to Paris when the war is over, and remind me of what you 
did to-day ; you will feel my gratitude." 

He was no gentleman ; he had not a spark of generosity 
in his nature ; he was mean and cruel ; he was a super- 
latively bad man. So his enemies say, beginning at Lewis 
Goldsmith and ending at Viscount Wolseley. It may be 
so ; but it is a little hard on the average citizen who 
would like to love the good men and hate the bad ones 
that a " superlatively evil man " like Napoleon Bonaparte 
should be endowed by Providence with qualities which 



xtn THE FALL OF PAEIS 573 

make such men as Wellington, Metternich, Talleyrand, 
Czar Alexander, Emperor Francis, or Bourbon Louis seem 
small, seem paltry, seem prosaic and sordid beside him. 

Another glimpse of the Emperor fixes attention in these 
last struggles. He was at the village of Mery where he 
rapidly reconnoitred over the marshy ground bordering 
the Aube. Getting out of the saddle, he sat down upon a 
bundle of reeds, resting his back against the hut of a night- 
watchman, and unrolled his map. Studying this a few 
moments, he sprang upon his horse, set off at a gallop, 
crying to his staff, " This time we have got them ! " 

It did indeed seem that Bliicher was entrapped and 
would be annihilated ; but after very heavy losses he 
managed to get across the marsh and the river. It is said 
that a sudden frost, hardening the mud, was all that saved 
him. 

Having been reenforced by the corps of Biilow and 
Woronzoff, which England had compelled Bernadotte to 
send, Bliicher advanced against Marmont on the Marne. 
The French fell back upon the position of Marshal Mor- 
tier ; and the two French generals, with about twelve 
thousand, checked one hundred thousand Prussians. 

Napoleon, with twenty-five thousand, hurried to the 
support of his marshals, and was in Bliicher's rear by 
March 1. Once more the Prussian seemed doomed. 
His only line of retreat lay through Soissons and across 
the Aisne. With Napoleon hot upon his track, and in his 
rear a French fortress, how was he to escape destruction ? 
A French weakling, or traitor, had opened the way by 
surrendering Soissons. Had he but held the town for a 
day longer, the war might have ended by a brilliant tri- 
umph of the French. Moreau was the name of the com- 



574 NAPOLEON char 

mandant at Soissons — a name of ill-omen to Napoleon, 
whose fury was extreme. 

" Have that wretch arrested," he wrote, " and also the 
members of the council of defence ; have them arraigned 
before a military commission composed of general officers, 
and, in God's name, see that they are shot in twenty-four 
hours." 

Here was lost the most splendid opportunity which 
came to the French during the campaign. Bliicher safely 
crossed the Aisne (March 3) in the night, and was attacked 
by Marmont on March 9. During the day the French 
were successful ; but Bliicher launched at the unwary 
Marmont a night attack which was completely successful. 
The French lost forty-five guns and twenty-five hundred 
prisoners. In a sort of desperation, Napoleon gave battle 
at Laon, but was so heavily outnumbered that he was 
forced to retreat. 

Almost immediately, however, he fell upon the Russians 
at Rheims, March 13, killed their general, St. Priest, and 
destroyed their force. It was at this time that Langeron, 
one of Bliicher's high officers, wrote : " We expect to see 
this terrible man everywhere. He has beaten us all, one 
after another; we dread the audacity of his enterprises, 
the swiftness of his movements, and the ability of his 
combinations. One has scarcely conceived any scheme of 
operations before he has destroyed it." 

This tribute from an enemy is very significant of what 
" this terrible man " might have accomplished had he been 
seconded. Suppose Murat and Eugene had been operat- 
ing on the allied line of communications ! Or suppose 
Augereau had done his duty in Switzerland, in the rear of 
the Allies ! Spite of the odds, it seems certain that Nape- 



XLii THE FALL OF PARIS 575 

leon would have beaten the entire array had he not been 
shamefully betrayed — abandoned by creatures of his own 
making. 

As if the stars in their courses were fighting against this 
struggling Titan, he learned that the relations between 
his wife and his brother Joseph were becoming suspicious. 
Chancellor Pasquier states that he himself saw the letters 
written by Napoleon on leaving Rheims in which S a vary, 
minister of police, was censured for not having made known 
the facts to the Emperor, and in which Savary was ordered 
to watch closely the suspected parties. Pasquier adds that 
at first he thought the Emperor must be deranged ; but that 
information which came to him afterward caused him to 
believe that Napoleon's suspicions "were only too well 
founded." 

Did ever a tragedy show darker lines than this ? All 
Europe marching against one man, his people divided, his 
lieutenants mutinous and inclining to treason, his senators 
ready to depose him, a sister and a brother-in-law stabbing 
him to the vitals, members of his Council of Regency in 
communication with the enemy, nobles whom he had 
restored and enriched plotting his destruction, and his 
favorite brother, his Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, 
using the opportunity which the trust afforded to debauch 
his wife ! 

Is it any wonder that even this indomitable spirit some- 
times bent under the strain ? 

Referring to the battle of Craonne, Constant writes : — 

" The Emperor who had fought bravely in this battle as 
in all others, and incurred the dangers of a common soldier, 
transferred his headquarters to Bray. Hardly had he 
entered the room when he called me, took his boots off 



576 NAPOLEON chap 

while leaning on my shoulder, but without saying a word, 
threw his sword and hat on the table, and stretched himself 
on the bed with a sound which left one in doubt whether 
it was the profound sigh of fatigue or the groan of utter 
despair. His Majesty's countenance was sorrowful and 
anxious. He slept for several hours the sleep of ex- 
haustion." 

After the Emperor's repulse at Laon, Schwarzenberg 
took heart and advanced toward Paris ; but Napoleon, 
leaving Rheims, marched to Epernay, and the Austrians 
fell back, pursued by the French. The allied armies, 
however, concentrated at Arcis on the Aube, and, with 
one hundred thousand men, beat off the Emperor when he 
attacked them with thirty thousand. 

Napoleon now made his fatal mistake — fatal because he 
could count on no one but himself. He moved his army to 
the rear of the Allies to cut their line of communications. 
This was a move ruinous to them, if the French armies in 
front should do their duty. The despatches in which 
Napoleon explained his march to the Empress Regent at 
Paris fell into the hands of the enemy, owing to Mar- 
mont's disobedience of orders in abandoning the line of 
communications. They hesitated painfully, they had even 
turned and made a day's march following Napoleon, when 
the capture of a bundle of letters from Paris, and the 
receipt of invitations from traitors and royalists in Paris, 
revealed the true situation there, and convinced them that 
by a swift advance they could capture the city and end 
the war. Accordingly they turned about, detaching a 
trifling force to harass and deceive the Emperor. 

These movements, Napoleon to the rear and the Allies 
toward Paris, decided the campaign. The small force of 



XLii THE FALL OF PARIS 577 

eight or ten thousand, which the Allies had sent to follow 
the Emperor, was cut to pieces by him at St. Dizier, and 
from the prisoners taken in the action he learned of 
rumors that the Allies were in full march upon Paris. 
He soon learned, also, that through Marmont's disobe- 
dience of orders a severe defeat had been inflicted upon 
the two marshals, and that Bliicher and Schwarzenberg 
had united. 

What should Napoleon now do? Should he continue 
his march, gather up the garrisons of his fortresses, enroll 
recruits, and, having cut the enemy's communications, 
return to give him battle ? He wished to do so, urged 
it upon the council of war, and at St. Helena repeated his 
belief that this course would have saved him. It might 
have done so. The army of the Allies, when it reached 
Paris, only numbered about one hundred and twenty thou- 
sand. Half that number of troops were almost within 
the Emperor's reach, and there were indications that the 
peasantry, infuriated by the brutality of the invaders, 
were about to rise in mass. At this time they could have 
been armed, for Napoleon had captured muskets by the 
thousand from the enemy. If Marmont and Mortier 
would but exhaust the policy of obstruction and resist- 
ance ; if Joseph and War-minister Clarke, at Paris, would 
but do their duty, the Allies would be caught between 
two fires, for the Emperor would not be long in marshal- 
ling his strength and coming back. 

But the older and higher officers were opposed to the 
plan. They told Napoleon that he must march at once 
to the relief of Paris. After a night of meditation and 
misery at St. Dizier, he set out on the return (March 28, 
1814). At Doulevent he received cipher despatches from 
2p 



678 NAPOLEON chap. 

Lavalette, postmaster-general in Paris, warning him that 
if he would save the capital he had not a moment to lose. 
This message aroused him for the first time to the 
extremity of the peril. He had expected a stubborner 
resistance from Marmont, had relied upon greater effec- 
tiveness in Joseph and Clarke. But even now he did 
not realize the awful truth, the absolute necessity for his 
immediate presence to save Paris — else he would have 
mounted horse and spurred across France as he had once 
done, to smaller purpose, across Spain : as he had done 
the year before when Dresden was beleaguered. In this 
connection let us remember what he had told Meneval, — 
that he was no longer able to endure horse exercise. 
For a cause which may have been physical, he did not 
mount a horse himself, for the long life-and-death ride, 
but he sent General Dejean. Through this messenger he 
told Joseph that he was coming at full speed, and would 
reach Paris in two days. Let the Allies be resisted for 
only two days — he would answer for the balance. 
Away sped Dejean, and he reached the goal in time. 

The Empress and the King of Rome had been sent 
from the capital by Joseph, and Joseph had taken horse 
to follow ; but Dejean spurred after him, and caught him 
up in the Bois de Boulogne. Brother's message was de- 
livered to brother. Napoleon's appeal made to Joseph ; 
and the answer, coldly given and stubbornly repeated, 
was, " Too late." 

The Allies had marched, dreading every hour to hear 
the returning Emperor come thundering on their rear; 
Marmont had made one of the worst managed of retreats, 
and had allowed the enemy to advance far more rapidly 
than they had dared to hope ; Parisians had vainly clam- 



XLii THE TALL OF PARIS 579 

ored for arms, that they might defend their city ; and 
while thousands of citizens stood on the heights of Mont- 
martre, looking expectantly for the Emperor, who was 
known to be coming, and while the cry, " It is he ! It is 
he ! " occasionally broke out as some figure on a white 
horse was seen in the distance, the imbecile Joseph wrote 
to the traitorous Marmont the permission to capitulate. 
This note had not been delivered, the fight was still 
going on, and Dejean prayed Joseph to recall the note. 
" The Emperor will be here to-morrow ! For God's 
sake, give him one day ! " 

With a sullen refusal to wait, Joseph put spurs to his 
horse, and set out to rejoin Maria Louisa. 

In the dark corridors of human passion and prejudice, 
who can read the truth? The rebukes of the outraged 
husband to a recreant brother may have swayed Joseph, 
just as the reproofs of an indignant chief to a disobe- 
dient subordinate may have controlled Marmont. 

The note from Joseph did its work. The defence 
ceased, the French army marched out, and the chief city 
of France fell, almost undefended. 

Talleyrand and his clique had invited the Allies to 
march upon the capital, and the same party of traitors 
had paralyzed the spirit of the defence as far as they were 
able. They had found unconscious but powerful accom- 
plices in Napoleon's brothers. 

That night the French troops marching away from 
Paris, according to the terms of the capitulation, were met, 
only a few miles from the city, by Napoleon. After hav- 
ing sent Dejean, he had hurried his troops on to Doulain- 
court, where more bad news was picked up ; and, by 
double marches, he reached Troyes (March 29), where he 



580 NAPOLEON chap. 

rested. At daybreak he left his army to continue its 
march, while he, with a small escort, flew on to Ville- 
neuve. There he threw himself into a coach and, fol- 
lowed by a handful of officers, dashed forward — to Sens, 
where he learned that the Allies were before Paris, — to 
Fontainebleau, where he was told of the flight of the Em- 
press, — to Essonnes, where they said that the fight of Paris 
was raging, — and to La Cour de France, only ten miles 
from his capital, where at midnight (March 30), as he 
waited for a fresh team to be put to his carriage, he heard 
the tramp of horses and the clank of arms. It was a 
squadron of cavalry on the highroad from Paris. He 
shouted to them from the dark, and to his challenge came 
the terrible response, "Paris has fallen." 

The scene which followed is one of those which haunt 
the memory. The chilly gloom of the night, the little way- 
side inn, the halted cavalry, the horseless carriage, the 
rage of the maddened Emperor, his hoarse call for fresh 
horses, his furious denunciation of those who had betrayed 
him, his desperate efforts to hurry the post-boys at the 
stables, the passion which carried him forward on foot a 
mile along the road to Paris, and the remonstrances of 
his few friends who urged him to go back — make a weird 
and tragic picture one does not forget. 

It was not until he met a body of French infantrj'-, also 
leaving Paris, that the frenzied Emperor would stop, and 
even then he would not retrace his steps. He sent Cau- 
laincourt to make a last appeal to Alexander of Russia, 
he who had risen in the theatre at Erfurth to take Napo- 
leon's hand when the actor recited, " The friendship of a 
V great man is a gift of the gods." 

A messenger was sent also to Marmont, and the Em 



XLii THE FALL OF PAEIS 581 

peror waited in the road to receive his answer ; nine miles, 
and not much more than an hour, being the tantalizing 
margin upon which, again, fate had traced the words, 
" Too late." Only the river separated him from the out- 
posts of the enemy ; their campfires could be seen by 
reflection in the distance, and yonder to the west was the 
dull glare hanging over Paris — Paris where a hundred 
thousand men were ready to fight, if only a leader would 
show them how ! 

Leaden must have been the feet of those hours, infinite 
the woe of that most impatient of men, that haughtiest of 
men, that self-consciously ablest of men, as he tramped 
restlessly back and forth on the bleak hill in the dark, 
awaiting the answers from his messengers. 

At last he was almost forced into his carriage and 
driven back to Fontainebleau. Making his way to one 
of the humblest rooms, he fell upon the bed, exhausted, 
heart-broken. 

You go to France to-day, and you see around you every- 
where, Napoleon. You hear, on all sides. Napoleon. Ask 
a Frenchman about other historic names, and he will reply 
with extravagant politeness. Leave him to speak for 
himself, and his raptures run to Napoleon. He is the 
Man ; he is the ideal soldier, statesman, financier, devel- 
oper, the creator of institutions, organizer of society, the 
inspiration of patriotism. 

What Frenchman speaks of the little men who pulled 
Napoleon down ? Who remembers them but to curse 
their infamous names ? Who does not know that the 
very soul of French memory and veneration for the past 
centres at the Invalides, where the dead warrior lies in 
state ? 



582 NAPOLEON chap, xlii 

We see this now. Time works its reversals of judgment. 
The pamphlet gives way to the book ; the caricature to 
the portrait ; the discordant cry of passion to the calm 
voice of reason. Angels roll away sepulchral stones ; and 
posterity sees the resurrected Cromwells, the Dantons, 
the Napoleons, just as they were. Great is the power 
of lies — lies boldly told and stubbornly maintained, but 
great, also, is the reaction of truth. The cause, and 
the man of the cause, may have been slain by the false- 
hood, and Truth may serve merely to show posterity 
where the grave is; but sometimes — not always — she 
does more ; sometimes the cause, and the man of the 
cause, are called back into the battle-field of the living ; 
sometimes the great issues are joined again ; sometimes 
the martyr remains triumphant, the victim holds the 
victory. 



CHAPTER XLIII 

rpHE final resurrection and triumph of Napoleon no one 
could foresee on March 31, 1814, when he lay in a 
stupor of weariness and soul-sickness at Fontainebleau, 
while the Allies were entering Paris. 

It' was a sad day out there at the old palace ; in the 
capital was spasmodic jubilation. Talleyrand, of the 
Council of Regency, had managed to remain in Paris when 
the Empress fled. Talleyrand became the moving spirit 
of royalist intrigue. He may not have intended the 
return of the Bourbons, may have been tricked by Vit- 
roUes as Lord Holland relates; but he had meant all the 
while to overthrow Napoleon, and had countenanced, if 
not suggested, plans for his assassination. 

To prove to Czar Alexander that France hungered and 
thirsted for the Bourbons, Talleyrand got up cavalcades 
of young aristocrats who rode about shouting, " Down 
with the tyrant ! Long live Louis XVIII. ! " High- 
born ladies, also, began to take active part in the busi- 
ness, it being an axiom with Talleyrand that if you 
wish to accomplish anything important, you "must set 
the women going." Ladies of the old nobility, elegantly 
dressed, were in the streets, distributing white cockades, 
and drumming up recruits. Royalism and clericalism 
bugled for all their forces ; and while Napoleon's friends, 

683 



584 NAPOLEON chap. 

disorganized, awaited leaders, the day was carried for the 
Bourbons. 

So that when the Allies marched into Paris, as masters, 
on March 31, 1814, the royalist faction welcomed the 
invaders as " Liberators." 

How had these royalists got back to France, to free- 
dom, and to wealth ? Through the magnanimity of " the 
tyrant" whom it was now so easy to abuse. How had 
those high-priests of the Church, who were Talleyrand's 
aides in treachery, regained their places, their influence, 
their splendid importance ? Through the leniency of the 
man who was now abandoned, denounced, sold to the ene- 
mies of France. 

And how had the wars commenced which Napoleon had 
inherited, and which he had never been able to end ? By 
the determination of kings and aristocracies to check the 
spread of French principles, to crush democracy in its 
birth, and to restore to its old place organized super- 
stition, class-privilege, and the divine right of kings. 
In the long fight, the new doctrine had gone down ; and 
the old had risen again. Royalists, clericals, class- worship- 
pers, fell into transports of joy. Glorious Easter, with a 
sun-burst, flooded them with light. They thronged the 
streets in gala dress ; they filled the air with glad outcry ; 
they kissed the victor's bloody hand, and hailed him as a 
god. 

They followed Czar Alexander through the streets to 
Talleyrand's house, with such extravagance of joyful 
demonstration that you might have thought him a French 
hero fresh from victories won over foreign foes. Cos- 
sacks, driving before them French prisoners, were enthu- 
siastically cheered as they passed through the streets. 



XLiii ELBA 585 

Aristocratic women, by the hundred, trooped after the 
foreigners who led the parade, threw themselves with 
embraces upon the horses, and kissed the very boots of 
the riders. And these troops, mark you, were those who 
had made havoc in the provinces of France, with a ferocity 
and a lust which had not only wreaked its fill upon help- 
less maid and matron, but had revelled in the sport of 
compelling fathers, husbands, and sons to witness what 
they could neither prevent nor revenge, and which had 
coldly slain the victims after the bestial appetite had been 
glutted. 

Cheer the Cossack bands as they prod with lances the 
bleeding French captives who have seen their homes 
burnt, and their wives and daughters violated and 
butchered I Hug the horses, and kiss the feet of the 
foreigners who have come to beat down your people, 
change your government, quell your democracy, force 
back into power a king and a system that had led the 
nation to misery and shame ! 

Do all this, O high-born ladies of France, for the 
triumph of to-day is yours! But when passion has 
cooled and reason returned ; when overwhelming press- 
ure from without has been removed and France has 
become herself again, your excesses of servility to-day 
will but have hastened the speed of the To-morrow in 
which your precious Bourbons, and your precious feudal- 
ism will be driven forever forth from the land into which 
foreign bayonets have brought them. The man who lin- 
gers at Fontainebleau is to-day no longer Emperor to the 
high and mighty ones in Paris. To confederated mon- 
archs he is " Bonaparte " ; to banded conspirators he is 
" Bonaparte " ; to recreant marshals, ungrateful nobles, 



586 NAPOLEON chap. 

grasping clericals, treacherous Dalbergs and Talleyrands, 
he is "Bonaparte." Foreign and domestic foes make 
their appointment at his triumphal column in the Place 
Vendome, tugging and pulling to drag his statue down, 
as they have dragged Mm down. 

The Empire is a wreck, the Napoleonic spell broken for 
all time to come. Down with the Corsican and his works ! 
Up with the Bourbon lilies, and the glories of the Old 
Regime ! 

So runs the current — the shouts of the honest devotee 
and of the time-server whose only aim in life is to find 
out which is the winning side. Far-seeing, indeed, would 
be the sage, — wise as well as brave, — who, in this hour 
of national degradation, should dare to say that all this 
carnival of royalism would pass like a dream ; — would 
dare to say that the fallen Emperor would rise again and 
would sweep his enemies from his path, and would come 
once more to rule the land — with the majesty and the 
permanence which belongs to none but the immortal dead. 
****** 

Troops had collected in the neighborhood of Fontaine- 
bleau to the number of forty or fifty thousand. The 
younger officers and the men of the rank and file were still 
devoted to the Emperor. Whenever he appeared he was 
met with the same old acclamations ; and shouts of " To 
Paris " indicated the readiness of the army for the great 
battle which it was thought he would fight under the 
walls of Paris. After his first torpor, Napoleon had 
recovered himself, had formed his plans, and had con- 
vinced himself that the allied army could be cut off and 
destroyed. But in order for him to succeed it was neces- 
sary that treason in Paris should give him a chance to 



XLiii ELBA 587 

win, and treason gave him no such chance. The high- 
priests and the nobles whose hands Napoleon had strength- 
ened by his Concordat and the recall of the emigres, 
made the streets of Paris hot with the liurrj'^ of their 
feet as they ran here, there, and yonder, marshalling their 
partisans. The Abbes Montesquieu and Louis, the Arch- 
bishop of Malines, cordially working with Talleyrand and 
Dalberg, and assisted by banker Laffitte and others of that 
kind, honeycombed the Senate and the various public 
bodies with conspiracy, drawing into one common net 
those who merely wished to end the war by getting rid 
of Napoleon, as well as those who were original Bour- 
bonites. In this crisis there was none to take the lead 
for Napoleon. He had deprived the masses of the people 
of all initiative ; had given them civil liberty, but had 
taken away from them all political importance. Into the 
hands of the nobles and the priests he had replaced power, 
wealth, influence, class organization. When the Church 
and the aristocracy turned upon him, where was the 
power of resistance to come from? The army was a 
tower of strength to the Emperor, it is true ; but even 
here there was mortal weakness, for the higher officers, 
who had been ennobled, were imbued with the spirit of 
their class. If the Senate, and the Church, and the 
aristocracy should declare against Napoleon, it soon be- 
came evident that his marshals would declare against him 
also. He had so bedizened them with titles, loaded them 
with honors, and gorged them with riches, that they could 
get nothing more by remaining loyal, even though he 
should finally triumph. Upon the other hand, should 
he fail, they would lose everything ; hence to desert him 
was plainly the safe thing to do. 



588 NAPOLEON chaf. 

Napoleon was holding a review of his troops at Fon- 
tainebleau when Caulaincourt was seen to approach him, 
and whisper something in his ear. He drew back as 
though he had been struck, and bit his lips, while a slight 
flush passed over his face. Recovering himself at once, 
he continued the review. Caulaincourt's whispered news 
had been that the Senate had deposed him. 

" The allied sovereigns will no longer treat with Bona- 
parte nor any member of his family." This declaration 
had cleared the way for the creation (April 1) of a pro- 
visional government by the French Senate, which provi- 
sional government was composed of Talleyrand and four 
other clerical and aristocratic conspirators. 

The beginning having been made, the rest was easy. 
On April 3 the Senate decreed the Emperor's deposition, 
alleging against him certain breaches of the Constitution, 
which breaches the Senate had unmurmuringly sanctioned 
at the time of their commission. Various public bodies in 
and around Paris began to declare against him, having no 
more right to depose him than the Senate possessed, but 
adding very sensibly to the demoralization of his sup- 
porters. Even yet the army was true ; even yet when he 
appealed to the troops, the answering cry was, " Live the 
Emperor ! " Thus while in Paris his petted civil func- 
tionaries, his restored clericals, and his nobles were jostling 
one another in the tumultuous rush of desertion, and while 
the swelling stream of the great treason was rolling 
onward as smoothly as Talleyrand could wish, there was 
one cause of anxiety to the traitors, — the attitude of the 
French army. 

On April 4 the Emperor held his usual review ; it 
proved to be the last. The younger officers and the 



ZLiii ELBA 689 

troops were as enthusiastic as ever, but the marshals were 
cold. After the parade they followed Napoleon to his 
room. Only in a general way is known what passed at 
this conference. The marshals were tired of the war, 
a.nd were determined that it should come to an end. 
Napoleon had formed his plans to march upon Paris 
and fight a great battle to save his crown. Marshal 
Macdonald had approved the plan and was ready to second 
his chief ; the others would listen to no plans, and were 
resolute in their purpose to get rid of this chief. It 
seems to be certain that if a surrender could not be got 
from Napoleon by fair means, the marshals were ready to 
try those that were foul. If he could not be persuaded, 
he was to be intimidated ; and if threats failed, he was 
to be assassinated. Talleyrand's provisional government 
was equally determined and unscrupulous. Napoleon 
was to be killed if he could not otherwise be managed. 
Foremost among the marshals demanding his abdication, 
and apparently threatening his life, was Marshal Ney, 
whose tone and bearing to his chief are said to have been 
brutally harsh. 

After having exhausted argument and persuasion upon 
these officers. Napoleon dismissed them, and drew up his 
declaration that he resigned the throne in favor of his son. 

" Here is my abdication ! " he said to Caulaincourt ; 
"carry it to Paris." He appeared to be laboring to con- 
trol intense emotion, and Caulaincourt burst into tears 
as he took the paper. 

As long as the French army appeared to be devoted to 
the Emperor, the Allies had not openly declared for the 
Bourbons. They had encouraged the idea that they 
would favor a regency in favor of Napoleon's son, con- 



590 NAPOLEON chap. 

ceeding to its fullest extent the right of the French people 
to select their own rulers. It was by the skilful use of 
this pretence that many of the French officers had been 
led astray. It was by this mingling of the sweet with 
the bitter that Napoleon's first act of abdication had been 
wrung from him by the marshals. Succeeded by the son 
he adored, France would not be wholly lost to him, since 
it remained to his dynasty. 

But here again Marmont ruined all. Played upon by 
Laffitte and Talleyrand's clique, — flattered, cajoled, and 
adroitly seduced, — this marshal of France made a secret 
bargain with the Allies which took from the Emperor the 
strongest body of troops then at hand. 

Thus it happened that when the Ney-Macdonald dele- 
gation, bearing the conditional abdication, returned to 
Paris, and were urging upon the Czar the claims of 
Napoleon's son, the conference was interrupted by an 
excited messenger who had come to announce to Alexan- 
der that Marmont's corps had been led into the allied 
lines. This astounding intelligence ended the negotia- 
tions. The Czar promptly dropped the veil, and disclosed 
the real policy of the Allies. The marshals went back to 
Fontainebleau to demand an abdication freed from condi- 
tions. 

Marmont had dealt the final blow to a tottering cause 
— "Marmont, the friend of my youth, who was brought 
up in my tent, whom I have loaded with honors and 
riches ! " as the fallen Emperor exclaimed, in accents of 
profound amazement and grief. Yes, when the miserable 
renegade sat down to plot with Talleyrand the complete 
ruin of the Empire, it was in a luxurious palace which 
Napoleon had given him, 



XLiii ELBA 591 

What officer had ruined a campaign in Spain and 
thereby done grievous injury to the Emperor in Russia ? 
Who had disobeyed orders, brought on the night surprise 
at Laon, and wrecked Napoleon's pursuit of Bliicher ? 
Who had lost the line of communications, by movements 
against orders, and had let Napoleon's most important de- 
spatches fall into the hands of the enemy ? Who had 
caused the defeat at Fere-Champenoise ; who had so 
feebly resisted the allied advance upon Paris that their 
progress astonished themselves ? Who had surrendered 
a vast city of eight hundred thousand souls to foreigners, 
when he must have known that Napoleon was coming to 
the rescue as fast as horse could run ? Marmont, the 
spoiled favorite ; Marmont, the vainglorious weakling ; 
Marmont, the false-hearted traitor ! Verily he reaped 
his reward. To the Bourbons he became a hero, and so 
remained for a season. But France — the real France 
— hated him as North America hates Benedict Arnold. 
The time came when he who had betrayed Napoleon for 
the Bourbons, betrayed the elder Bourbons for the House 
of Orleans. Despised by all parties, he wandered about 
Europe as wretched as he deserved to be. And the day 
came when the gondoliers at Venice pointed him out 
scornfully to each other, and refused to bend an oar for 
the miscreant. 

" You see him yonder ! That is Marmont. Well, he 
was Napoleon's friend, and he betrayed him ! " 



Undaunted even by Marmont's defection, Napoleon 
issued a proclamation, and began his preparations to re- 
tire beyond the Loire, and fight it out. His conditional 



692 NAPOLEON chap. 

abdication rejected, war could not be worse than peace, 
and he explained his plan of campaign to his marshals. 
They cut him short, brusquely, menacingly. The Em- 
peror stood alone, forsaken by all his lieutenants, and 
made an imploring address to them, pleading with them 
to make one final effort for France. His words fell on 
hearts that were turned to stone. They harshly declared 
that the confidence of the army was gone. Macdonald 
said that they must have unconditional abdication. 

The Emperor promised to reply next day, and, as his 
marshals filed out, he said, in bitterness of spirit, — 
" Those men have neither heart nor bowels ; I am con- 
quered less by fortune than by the egotism and ingrati- 
tude of my companions-in-arms." 

Who has not read of that panic of apostasy which now 
ran like a torrent? From the setting sun at Fontainebleau 
to that which was rising in Paris, all turned — turned with 
the haste of panic-stricken pardon-seekers, or of greed- 
devoured place-hunters. From the highest to the lowest, 
the fallen Emperor's attendants left him. Princes, dukes, 
marshals, generals, — all creations of his, — fled from him 
as from the contagion of pestilence. Even Berthier, the 
favorite, the confidant, the pampered and petted — even 
Berthier bit his nails for a brief season of hesitancy, and 
then abandoned his friend to his misery. Marmont's trea- 
son had hurt, had wrung a cry of amazement and pain 
from that tortured spirit; but Berthier's was a crueller 
stab. " Berthier, you see that I have need of consolation, 
that my true friends should surround me. Will you 
come back ? " Berthier went, and he did not come 
back. 

They left him, singly and in squads, till he and his faith- 



xLiii ELBA 608 

f al guard were almost all that remained. His very valets, 
the Mameluke he brought from Egypt, and Constant 
whose Memoirs portray his master so lovingly, could not 
resist the panic of the hour ; they turned their backs upon 
their master, and, according to that master's statements in 
his instructions to his executors, they robbed him before 
they fled. But there were some who did not go, a few 
who stood the storm. May their glorious names live for- 
ever ! Among these it is pleasant to find the name of his 
old schoolmate, Colonel Bussy. 

Bertrand, Gourgaud, Montholon, Bassano, Cambronne, 
Caulaincourt, Lavalette, Druot, and some others did not 
blanch. Nor did the Old Guard falter. The " growlers " 
had followed the chief — murmuring sometimes, but fol- 
lowing — all through the terrors of the last campaign; 
they were ready to follow him again. 

And there were womanly hearts that warmed to the 
lonely monarch, and would have consoled him — first of 
all, Josephine. She had watched his every movement 
though the campaign with an agony of interest and appre- 
hension. His name was ever in her thoughts and on her 
lips. Of all who came from the army she would ask : 
How does he look ? Is he pale ? Does he sleep ? Does he 
believe his star has deserted him? Often the harassed 
Emperor found time to write to her, brief notes full of 
kindness and confidence. These she would take to her 
privacy, read, and weep over. She understood the great 
man, at the last ; she had not done so at first. From 
Brienne he wrote her, "I have sought death in many 
battles, but could not find it. I would now hail it as a 
boon. Yet I should like to see Josephine once more." 
This note she carried in her bosom. 



594 NAPOLEON chap. 

When she heard of the abdication, she was frantic with 
grief, and she would have flown to his side, only she 
thought of one who had the better right, — Maria Louisa. 
As the broken monarch sat in the gloom, his great head 
sunk on his breast, two other noble-hearted women 
appeared at Fontainebleau. One of them was the beauti- 
ful Polish lady, Madame Walewski ; the name of the other 
is not given. They were announced, and the Emperor 
promised to see them. After waiting many hours, they 
went away. Napoleon had fallen into revery again and 
had forgotten they were there. It is said that he took 
poison, intending to kill himself. This has been ques- 
tioned ; but it is certain that he swallowed some drug 
which brought on a sudden and alarming illness, during 
which he said he was going to die. " I cannot endure the 
torments I experience. They have dragged my eagles in 
the dirt ! They have misunderstood me ! Marmont 
gave me the last blow ! I loved him. Berthier's deser- 
tion has broken my heart I My old friends, my old com- 
panions-in-arms ! " 

Says Constant : " What a night ! what a night ! While 
I live I shall never think of it without a shudder." 

On the morning after this attempted suicide, Napoleon 
"appeared much as usual," and met his marshals to give 
them his answer to their demand for unconditional abdi- 
cation. Even yet he made one more attempt to inspire 
them to effort, to infuse into them something of his own 
courage. It was all in vain. Then he scrawled the few 
lines in which he laid down his great office, and handed 
them the paper. 

" You claim that you need rest ! Very well, then, take 
it ! " 



XLiii ELBA 595 

" What shall we demand of the Allies in your behalf? " 
the marshals inquired. 

" Nothing. Do the best you can for France; for myself, 
I ask nothing." 

They went away upon their errand, and once more the 
Emperor sank into a stupor of despondency. Much of 
the time he spent seated upon a stone bench, near the 
fountain, in the English garden which he had himself laid 
out at the back of the palace. Just as he had lain, novel in 
hand, upon the sofa at Moscow, silent and moody day by 
day ; and just as he had sat in the chateau of Diiben, in 
1813, idly tracing big letters on white paper ; so he now 
sat by the hour on the stone bench in the garden at Fon- 
tainebleau, saying nothing, and kicking his heel into the 
gravel until his boot had made a hole a foot deep in the 
earth. 

Deserted as he had been. Napoleon was yet a man to be 
dreaded; and the Allies were most anxious to come to 
terms with him, and to get him out of the country. 
Partly from fear of what he might do if driven to despair, 
and partly out of generosity to a fallen foe, the Czar influ- 
enced the other powers to sign the treaty of Fontainebleau 
with Napoleon, whereby he was to retain his title of Em- 
peror, to receive a yearly pension of $400,000 from France, 
and remain undisturbed as Emperor of Elba. His son, 
as successor to his wife, was to have a realm composed of 
Parma, Placentia, and Guastalla. 

Resigning himself to his fate. Napoleon received the 
Commissioners whom the Allies sent to take charge of his 
journey to his new empire, and busied himself in the selec- 
tion of the books and baggage he intended to take with 
him. 



596 NAPOLEON chap. 

With assumed gayety he said to Constant, whom the 
Emperor evidently believed would follow him, " Eh, well, 
my son, get your cart ready : we will go and plant our 
cabbages." 

But every now and then the full sweep of bitter reality 
would come over him, and he would clap his hand to his 
forehead, crying : — 

" Great God ! Is it possible ? " 

His departure was fixed for April 20, 1814. The Im- 
perial Guard formed in the White Horse Court of the 
palace. The Emperor appeared upon the stairs, pale and 
firm. A dozen or more stanch friends waited to bid him 
farewell. He shook hands with them all. The line of 
carriages was waiting ; but he passed hastily by them, 
and advanced toward the soldiers drawn up in the court. 

It was seen then that he would speak to the troops, and 
dead silence reigned. The old, proud bearing was there 
again, — pride softened by unutterable sadness, — and the 
voice was full and sonorous as he spoke the few words 
which reached all hearts that day, reach them now, and 
will reach them as long as human blood is warm. 

" Soldiers of the Old Guard, I bid you farewell ! For 
twenty years I have led you in the path of honor and 
glory. In these last days, as in the days of our pros- 
perity, you have never ceased to be models of fidelity and 
courage. With men such as you, our cause could never 
have been lost ; we could have maintained a civil war for 
years. But it would have rendered our country unhappy. 
I have therefore sacrificed all my interests to those of 
France. Her happiness is my only thought. It will still 
be the object of my wishes. Do not regret my fate. If I 
have consented to live, it is in order to promote your glory. 



xr.TTT ELBA 597 

I trust to write the deeds we have achieved together. 
Adieu, my children I I would that I could press you all 
to my heart. Let me embrace your general and your 
eagle ! " 

He took General Petit, commander of the Guard, in his 
arms, and he pressed the eagle to his lips. 

The soldiers sobbed, even the Commissioners were 
touched; and Napoleon, hurrying through the group 
which had gathered round him, reached his carriage, fell 
back on the cushions, and covered his face with his hands. 

There was the word of command, the crunching and 
grinding of wheels, and the carriages were soon lost to 
sight. 



CHAPTER XLIV 

rpHE Count of Provence was living in England when 
Napoleon's Senate called him to the throne. He was 
one of those who had " digged the pit " for his brother, 
Louis XVI. ; and who, when that brother was falling into 
it, discreetly ran away to foreign lands. After several 
changes of asylum on the Continent, he had gone to Eng- 
land as a last refuge. France had well-nigh forgotten 
him. A generation of Frenchmen who knew not the 
Bourbons had grown up ; and the abuses of the Old Order 
were known to the younger generation only as an almost 
incredible story, told in the evenings by older people, 
as the family circled about the hearthstone. So com- 
pletely had the Revolution swept away the foul wrongs of 
the Bourbon system, that the younger generation could 
never be made to understand why their fathers hated it 
with such bitterness. Reined in by the iron hand of Na- 
poleon, the nobles and the clericals of the Empire seemed 
to be harmless enough. Why should the noble and the 
priest of the Old Order have been so much worse than 
these ? 

The graybeards in France knew ; but the younger 
people could no more realize the former situation than 
could the children of Daniel Boone, George Rogers Clarke, 
John Sevier, or of the New England pioneers, understand 

698 



CHAP. XLiv ELBA 699 

the horrors of Indian warfare. The story of Bourbon 
misrule, class tyranny, and church greed fell upon the ear 
with a sound deadened by the lapse of twenty odd years. 

Bourbon emissaries had pledges and soft words for all 
parties. To Napoleon's nobles were given the assurance 
that they should remain noble ; to his generals, that they 
should retain their honors and their wealth. To the 
priests it was not necessary to say that they should have 
even more than the Concordat gave, for the priests knew 
how dearly the Bourbons loved the old pact between 
Church and State. To pacify men of liberal ideas, prom- 
ises were made that the restored Bourbons would rule as 
constitutional kings, recognizing in good faith the changes 
wrought by the Revolution. Napoleon's Senate was not 
so forgetful of its own safety, and of the interests of 
France, that it failed to put the contract in writing. The 
Constitution of a limited monarchy was formulated, and 
the Count of Artois, brother and representative of Louis 
XVIII., accepted its conditions. 

In England the new King was given an ovation upon 
his departure for France, and he took occasion to write 
to the Prince Regent that, next to God, he owed his 
crown to Great Britain. This statement was not good 
policy, for neither in France nor among the potentates of 
the Continent did it tend to popularize the speaker ; but it 
was the truth, nevertheless. The settled purpose of Pitt 
had been the restoration of the Bourbons, and upon this 
basis it is now known that he built the first European 
coalition against republican France. Canning and Cas- 
tlereagh had but inherited the principles of the abler Pitt. 
In a speech in Parliament (April 7, 1814), Lord Castle- 
reagh proclaimed that his "object had long been to 



600 NAPOLEON chap. 

restore Europe to that ancient social system which her 
late convulsions had disjointed and overthrown." 

As Hobhouse says, " When he talks so plainly, even 
Lord Castlereagh can be understood ; when he professes 
such principles, even Lord Castlereagh may be believed." 

Fresh from his London ovation, and full of his ideas of 
divine right, Louis met the French legislative body at 
Compiegne, and evaded their request for a declaration of 
the royal policy. It became evident that he intended to 
set aside the pledges made in his name, and to rule as ab- 
solute sovereign. To this purpose he was urged by cleri- 
cals, nobles, and his own inclinations, for, as Napoleon said, 
" the Bourbons had learned nothing and forgotten noth- 
ing." With a royal disregard of facts, he had mentally 
abolished Napoleon's empire, all of its glories, all of its 
shame, and had appropriated the entire era to himself. In 
his own mind he had become King of France at the death 
of the boy, Louis XVII.; and the year 1814 was the 
nineteenth year of his reign ! Here, indeed, was cause 
for tribulation among the eminent turncoats who had ex- 
changed Napoleon for the Bourbon ! If the Empire had 
been but a hallucination, what would become of the nobles 
created by the Emperor, the honors conferred by him, the 
lands whose titles had been granted by him, the great in- 
stitutions which had been founded by him ? What would 
become of his peers, his judges, his marshals, his schools, 
hospitals, and public charities ? Where would the Legion 
of Honor be ? What was to become of the revolutionary 
principle that all Frenchmen were equals in law, and that 
all careers were open to merit ? Questions like these 
buzzed throughout the land, and the hum of inquiry soon 
grew into the murmurs of alarm, of anger. If Bourbons 



XLiv ELBA 601 

came back to power in any such temper as that, what 
would become of eminent statesmen who had overturned 
the ancient monarchy, abolished the nobility, confiscated 
the wealth of the Church, and guillotined the King? 
What would be the fate of Talleyrand, Fouche, and Com- 
pany? Aghast at such a prospect as unhampered and 
vengeful Bourbonism threatened, eminent renegades who 
had negotiated Napoleon's downfall with the Czar Alex- 
ander appealed to the Russian monarch to stand between 
themselves and the danger. Like most mortals, the Czar 
had a strict code of morals for his neighbors. Ready to 
break pledges himself, it shocked him to see Louis ignore 
the conditions upon which he had been summoned to 
France. In courtly phrase the Bourbon was notified that 
until he confirmed the promises Artois had made to the 
Senate, there should be no royal entry into Paris. Even 
under this pressure, Louis would not yield an iota of the 
precious dogma of divine right. Refusing to concede 
that the people had any inherent powers whatever, and 
stubbornly maintaining that all power, privilege, and sov- 
ereignty rested in him alone, he graciously published a 
proclamation in which he granted to the people, of his 
own free will, certain civil and political rights, ignor- 
ing the Senate altogether. This " Charter " having been 
signed, the King made his triumphal entry into Paris, 
May 3, 1814. 

On the evening of the same day, as the sun was sinking 
in the Mediterranean, the mountains of the island of Elba 
rose upon the sight of the crew of the British vessel, the 
Undaunted^ and Napoleon had his first glimpse of his little 
realm in the sea. 

His journey from Fontainebleau to Frejus, on the French 



602 NAPOLEON chap. 

coast, had been, at first, soothed by many expressions of 
kindness and of sympathy from the people who thronged 
the line of travel ; but as the fallen Emperor reached the 
province where the White Terror had once raged, and 
was to rage again, popular expressions underwent a com- 
plete change. Mobs of hooting royalists surrounded his 
carriage, and dinned into his ears the most brutal in- 
sults. Only his escort saved him from being torn to 
pieces. At Avignon he missed, almost by miracle, the 
dreadful fate which overtook Marshal Brune there, after 
Waterloo. Napoleon believed that these royalist mobs 
were set upon him by Talleyrand's provisional govern- 
ment, and perhaps his suspicion was correct. It is certain 
that a certain nobleman, Maubreuil by name, afterward 
charged Talleyrand with having employed him to kill 
Napoleon ; and when Talleyrand denied the story, Mau- 
breuil took the first occasion to beat him — a beating 
which Talleyrand was wise enough not to endeavor to 
punish by prosecution. 

Surrounded by savage mobs who jeered him, insulted 
him, threatened him, and made desperate efforts to seize 
him. Napoleon is said to have lost his nerve. Unfriendly 
witnesses allege that he trembled, paled, shed tears, and 
cowered behind Bertrand, seeking to hide. What is more 
certain, is that he disguised himself in coat and cap of the 
Austrian uniform, mounted the horse of one of the atten- 
dants, and rode in advance of the carriages to escape 
recognition. Courage, after all, seems to be somewhat 
the slave of habit : a soldier may brave death a hundred 
times in battle, and yet become unnerved at the prospect 
of being torn to pieces by a lot of maddened human 
wolves. It should be remembered, however, that the 



xLiy ELBA 603 

only real evidence we have of Napoleon's terror was the 
wearing of the disguise. If this makes him a coward, 
he falls into much distinguished company, for history is 
full of examples of similar conduct on the part of men 
who are admitted to have been brave. 

Napoleon had banished from court his light sister 
Pauline, because of some impertinence of the latter to 
the Empress Maria Louisa. This light sister was now 
living at a chateau which was on his route to the coast, 
and he spent a day and a half with her. Shocked to see 
her imperial brother in the Austrian uniform, she refused 
to embrace him until he had put it off and put on his 
own. 

While Napoleon was staying at the chateau, a crowd 
of people from the surrounding country gathered in the 
courtyard. He went down and mingled with them. 
Soon noticing an old man who wore a red ribbon in his 
button-hole. Napoleon went up to him and said : — 

"Are you not Jacques Dumont ?" 

Too much surprised to reply at once, the veteran at 
length faltered, " Yes, my lord ; yes, General ; yes, yes, 
sire ! " 

" You were with me in Egypt ? " 

" Yes, sire ! " and the hand was brought to the salute. 

" You were wounded ; it seems to me a long while 
ago ? " 

"At the battle of Trebbia, sire." 

The veteran by this time was shaking with emotion, 
and all the crowd had clustered thickly about these two. 

Taking off his cross of the Legion of Honor, Napoleon 
put it upon his old soldier ; and while the veteran wept, 
the crowd shouted, " Live the Emperor ! " 



604 NAPOLEON cnxt. 

" My name ! To remember my name after fifteen 
years ! " the old man continued to repeat ; and so great 
was the sensation this little incident was creating that 
the Commissioners who had charge of the exile grew 
alarmed, and hastened to get him back into the house. 

The captain and the crew of the British frigate had 
never seen the French Emperor save through the glasses 
of the English editors. Any one who knows how great is 
the power of an unbridled press to blacken the fairest 
name, distort beyond recognition the loftiest character, 
and blast the hopes of the noblest career, can readily 
comprehend what was the current British opinion of Na- 
poleon Bonaparte in 1814. Seen through the eyes of 
Tory editors and pamphleteers, he was a man contrasted 
with whom Lucifer might well hope to become a popular 
hero. 

Great was the surprise of Captain Usher and his 
sailors to see a handsome, quiet, polite, and self-controlled 
gentleman, who talked easily with everybody, conformed 
without fuss to all the ship regulations, gave himself no 
airs of superhuman loftiness, and took an intelligent 
interest in the ship and in the folks about him. So 
great was the charm of his manner, and of his conversa- 
tion, that English prejudice wore away ; and the sailors 
began to say, " Boney is a good fellow, after all. " 

It is amusing to note that Sir Walter Scott records 
with pride the fact that there was one sturdy sailor who 
was not to be softened, who retained his surliness to the 
last, and whose gruff comment upon all the good-humored 
talk of the Emperor was the word, '•'■ Humbug!" The 
name of this unyielding Briton was Hinton ; and both 
Sir Walter and his son-in-law Lockhart record his name 



xuT ELBA 806 

with a sort of Tory veneration. In spite of the unyield- 
ing Hinton, the sailors of the Undaunted grew fond 
enough of Napoleon to accept a handsome gratuity from 
him at the journey's end ; and the boatswain, addressing 
him on the quarter-deck in the name of the crew, 
"Thanked his honor, and wished him long life and 
prosperity in the island of Elba, and better luch next 
time.^'' 

Neither Sir Walter Scott nor his son-in-law Lockhart, 
report Hinton's remarks upon this occasion ; and they 
leave us in doubt as to whether his virtue held out 
against the golden temptation, or whether he pocketed 
his share, with a final snort of, " Humbug ! " 

On May 4, 1814, the Emperor made his official landing 
in Elba, whose inhabitants (about thirteen thousand souls) 
received him well. He made a thorough investigation of 
his new empire, its industries, resources, etc., and sitting 
his horse upon a height from which he could survey his 
whole domain, remarked good-hum oredly that he found 
it rather small. 

Soon joined by his mother and by his sister Pauline, also 
by the seven hundred troops of the Old Guard assigned 
him by the Treaty of Fontainebleau, Napoleon's establish- 
ment at Porto Ferrajo resembled the Tuileries in minia- 
ture. Imperial etiquette stiffened most of its joints, and 
put on much of its formidable armor. Visitors poured 
into Elba by the hundred, and with many of these Napo- 
leon conversed with easy frankness, speaking of past events 
with the tone of a man who was dead to the world. 

His restless energies found some employment in the 
affairs of his little kingdom, and in the planning of all 
sorts of improvements upon which he lavished freely the 



606 NAPOLEON chap. 

funds he had brought from France. With Pauline's 
money he bought a country-seat, where he spent much 
time, and where he could occasionally be seen helping to 
feed the chickens. 

His mother had come and his sister, but where was 
wife and child ? The allied sovereigns had pledged them- 
selves by formal treaty to send Maria Louisa to him under 
escort, and the promise had been broken. Wife and child 
had been enveloped with hostile influences, kept well out 
of his reach, hastened from France, and carried to Vienna. 

Historians gloss over the intrigue which followed — as 
foul a conspiracy against human virtue and sacred human 
relations as ever soiled the records of the human race. 

The Emperor Francis of Austria and Metternich, his 
minister, were determined that Maria Louisa should never 
rejoin her husband, treaty or no treaty. They knew her 
character, and for his daughter the royal father laid the 
most infamous snare. He deliberately encouraged Neip- 
perg, an Austrian libertine of high degree; and Napoleon's 
wife, entangled in the meshes of this filthy intrigue which 
had found her all too ready to yield, no longer wished to 
return to the husband she had betrayed. 

No wonder the authors who gloat over Napoleon's sins 
find no comfort here ; and hurry on to other topics. They 
have made horrible accusations against him and his sister 
Pauline, on the mere word of a spiteful Madame de Remu- 
sat, and of an unscrupulous liar like Fouche. But the ac- 
cusations might be true, and nevertheless Napoleon would 
shine like a superior being beside such an exemplar of 
divine right as the Emperor Francis, who coldly and delib- 
erately, as a matter of state policy, pushed his own daugh- 
ter into the arms of a libertine ! 



XLiv ELBA 607 

We have read of the crimes of the vulgar, the canaille, 
the Marats, and the Heberts ; does any page of modern 
history hold a story more sickening than this ? Did any 
criminal of the vulgar herd stoop to depths more loath- 
some than Francis, Emperor " by the grace of God," wal- 
lowed in ? 

After having broken their treaty upon the sacred sub- 
ject of wife and child, the allied kings found it easy 
enough to violate it upon matters less important. They 
did not respect the property of the Bonaparte family as 
they had agreed ; they did not pay the Bonaparte pen- 
sions ; they did not bestow the principalities promised 
for Napoleon's son ; and they paid no respect to that pro- 
vision of the compact which secured to Napoleon invio- 
lably the island of Elba. Bitter personal enemies of the 
fallen Emperor, Pozzo di Borgo, Lord Wellington, Talley- 
rand, and others, agreed that he must be removed to a 
greater distance from Europe, St. Helena being the place 
which met with most favor. The fact that the allied 
kings had pledged themselves to allow him to remain at 
Elba, seems not to have entered into the discussions at 
all. He who had broken no treaties was already an out- 
law in the counsels of those who had broken all : they 
could deal with him as they chose. "In the name of 
the most Holy Trinity " they had pledged faith to him ; 
they could as easily breach the last treaty as its predeces- 
sors, being kings by the grace of God, and owing no fealty 
to ordinary moralities. 

The British ministry began to negotiate with the East 
India Company for the island of St. Helena ; and the 
purpose of the allied kings to send him there as a prisoner 
of war not only reached Napoleon at Elba, but actually 



608 NAPOLEON chap. 

found its way into the Moniteur, the official gazette of 
France. 

The fact that Louis XVIII. did not pay one cent of the 
1400,000 which the Treaty of Fontainebleau had provided 
for Napoleon's annual revenue, was of itself a source of 
serious embarrassment to him, justifying him in setting 
aside a contract which his enemies did not regard ; but 
it had less to do with his movements, perhaps, than any 
other breach of the treaty. He cared nothing for money ; 
little for personal luxury. " I can get along with one 
horse, and with a dollar a day," he declared with demo 
cratic independence. Besides, he could easily have 
secured from Europe the sums he needed, as he himself 
publicly declared on his return to France. But when he 
found that his wife and child would never be surrendered ; 
that Talleyrand and the Bourbons were still bent upon 
having him assassinated ; that if he could not be killed 
he was to be taken away to a distant rock and held as a 
prisoner of war, the impulse became irresistible to make 
one desperate effort to escape the impending doom. 
Those who watched over his personal safety had already 
stopped, disarmed, and sent away two would-be assassins : 
who could tell whether the third would be stopped? It 
came to him that the Allies had agreed to send him to 
St. Helena : who could say when a British man-of-war 
might bear down upon little Elba? Brooding over his 
wrongs, and over the perils of his situation. Napoleon 
gave way to occasional bursts of anger, declaring that 
he would die the death of a soldier, arms in hand, before 
he would submit to the proposed removal. 

A Scotchman of rank who visited Elba at this time 
wrote : " Bonaparte is in perfect health, but lodged in a 



xLiT ELBA dO» 

worse house than the worst description of dwellings 
appropriated to our clergy in Scotland, yet still keeping 
up the state of Emperor, that is, he has certain ofi&cers 
with grand official names about him. We were first 
shown into a room where the only furniture was an old 
sofa and two rush-bottom chairs, and a lamp with two 
burners, only one of which was lighted. An aide-de- 
camp received us, who called a servant and said that one 
of the lights had gone out. The servant said it had never 
been lighted. ' Light it, then,' said the aide-de-camp. 
Upon which the servant begged to be excused, saying 
that the Emperor had given no orders upon the subject. 
We were then received by Bonaparte in an inner room. 
The Emperor wore a very old French Guard uniform with 
three orders, and had on very dirty boots, being just come 
in from his country house." 

Then the writer describes a conversation in which Na- 
poleon spoke without apparent reserve of his past life. 
Referring to the doings of the Bourbons in France, he 
remarked that they had better mind what they were about, 
as there were still five hundred thousand excellent sol- 
diers there. " But what is all that to me ? " he exclaimed 
with a rapid turn ; " I am to all intents and purposes 
dead." 

"His manner," says the Scotchman, "was that of a blunt, 
honest, good-hearted soldier's, his smile, when he chose it, 
very insinuating. He never has anybody to dinner. Ber- 
trand says that they are in the greatest distress for money, 
as the French court does not pay the stipulated salary to 
Bonaparte. 

" The following day the Emperor set off for his country 
house. He was in an old coach with four half-starved 



610 NAPOLEON chap. 

horses ; on the wheel-horse sat a coachman of the ordinary 
size, and the bridles had the imperial eagle on them ; on 
the leaders there was a mere child, and the bridles had the 
coronet of a British viscount on them. He had General 
Bertrand in the carriage, and two or three officers behind 
on small ponies, which could not, by all the exertions of 
their riders, keep up with the carriage, emaciated as those 
poor horses were." 

The Scotchman contrasts the wretched little establish- 
ment at Elba with the splendor of the Tuileries where he 
went to see Louis XVIII. dine in public, — separate table 
for king, separate tables for princes of the blood-royal ; 
attendant courtiers standing in full dress, duchesses 
only being permitted to sit; everything served on gold 
plate ; the dining hall, a hundred feet long, brilliantly 
lighted and hung with gobelin tapestries, " and a very fine 
concert going on all the time." 

The contrast between these two pictures, striking as it 
was to the Scotchman, was no less so to Napoleon, who 
felt the squalor of Elba and longed for the lost grandeur 
of France. If there had been a secret bargain between 
the fallen Emperor and the Bourbons that they should 
prepare the country for his speedy return, they could 
hardly have gone to work in a more effective manner to 
accomplish that result. They had not been in possession 
of the throne six months before the nation was fairly seeth- 
ing with discontent. 

Note. — While the Congress of Vienna was in session, Dr. Richard 
Bright, an Englishman, was visiting the city and saw the pageant. 
He describes many of the august sovereigns who were in attendance, 
and gives an account of the festivities, amusements, and polite dissipa- 
tions which were in progress. But perhaps the most interesting page 



xuv ELBA 611 

the Doctor WTote was that in which he relates his visit to Napoleon's 
son, who was then with his mother at the palace of Schoubrunn. "We 
found that all the servants about the palace were Frenchmen, who 
still wore the liveries of Napoleon. . . . We . . . were ushered into 
a room where the infant [King of Rome] was sitting on the floor 
amusing himself amidst a profuse collection of playthings, ... He 
was at that moment occupied with a toy which imitated a well-fur- 
nished kitchen. He was the sweetest child I ever beheld ; his com- 
plexion light, with fine, white, silky hair, falling in curls upon his 
neck. He was dressed in the embroidered uniform of an hussar, and 
seemed to pay little attention to us as we entered, continuing to ar- 
range the dishes in his little kitchen. I believe he was the least em- 
barrassed of the party. He was rather too old to admit of loud praise 
of his beauty, and rather too young to enter into conversation. His 
appearance was so engaging that I longed to take him in my arms, 
but his situation forbade such familiarity. Under these circum- 
stances, we contrived a few trifling questions, to which he gave such 
arch and bashful answers as we have all often received from children 
of his age." 

Madame Montesquieu was stiU with the child, but, after a while, 
she and all the other French attendants were dismissed. The effort 
was made to wean the poor boy of all things French, and to trans- 
form him into an Austrian. 

It may be proper here to add that he died of consumption at the 
early age of twenty-one. It is darkly hinted that the same malevo- 
lent influences which destroyed the respectability of Napoleon's wife 
led the son into excesses which undermined his constitution. To the 
last he was passionately fond of his father, and when Marmont visited 
Vienna in 1831 the Duke de Reichstadt (as the boy was called in 
Austria) eagerly drew from him all that he would tell of the great 
Emperor. 

The cage in which Napoleon's only legitimate son was kept was 
gilded with pension and title and outward show of deference, but it 
was a cage, nevertheless, and he died in it (1832). 



CHAPTER XLV 

rpHE ink was hardly dry upon the Charter before 
Louis XVIII. began to break its conditions. It had 
served its purpose, he had ridden into office upon it : what 
further use had he for it? Why should he trammel his 
actions by treaty when the other kings of Europe were 
freeing themselves from such fetters? To the south of 
him was Spain, where the liberals had framed a constitu- 
tion which Ferdinand, released by Napoleon early in 1814, 
had sworn to respect, and which he had set aside the 
moment he had taken again into his hands the reins of 
power. Instead of reform and limited monarchy on the 
peninsula, there was now a full restoration of the Old 
Order, feudalism, tithes, local tyrannies, clerical and 
royal absolutism, the jails full of democrats, and the 
Inquisition hungry for heretics. Nobles and priests struck 
their ancient bargain, mastered a willing king, and with 
the resistless strength of self-interest, class-prejudice, and 
corporate unity of purpose, acting upon the ignorance, 
the superstition, and the cultivated hatreds of the people, 
carried Spain back with a rush to the good old times of 
Bourbon and Roman absolutism. 

Not only in the south was counter-revolution trium- 
phant; in the north it was equally so. In Jerome 

612 



CHAP. xLy LOUIS XVIII 813 

Bonaparte's kingdom of Westphalia, where the people had 
driven out the system of Napoleon, and called in their 
former rulers, old laws and customs rattled back to their 
rusty grooves ; the Code Napoleon vanished ; equality of 
civil right was seen no more, feudalism fell like a chain 
upon the astounded peasant, purchasers of state lands were 
ousted without compensation, special privilege and tax 
exemptions again gladdened the elect, aristocracy and 
clericalism swept away every vestige of Jerome's brief 
rule, the torture chamber again rang with the shrieks of 
victims, and the punishment of death by breaking upon 
the wheel emphasized the desperate efforts nobles and 
priests were making to stem the torrent of modern lib- 
eralism. 

And the Holy Father at Rome, loosed by Napoleon from 
Fontainebleau at about the same time that Ferdinand of 
Spain had been released from Valen^ay, had wended his 
way back to Italy as Ferdinand had to Spain, and, seated 
again in St. Peter's chair, had laid his pious hands to the 
same work in Rome which Ferdinand was busy with in 
Madrid. 

With absolutism and feudalism triumphing all around 
him, why should not Louis XVIII. follow the glorious 
examples? Did he not owe it to God and the ancient 
Bourbon kings to cast out from France the devil of democ- 
racy which had rended her, and to clothe her once more 
in her right mind — in the docile obedience to kingly 
word and clerical admonition? Apparently he did; and 
apparently he believed that the quicker he set about it the 
better. 

He had guaranteed freedom of the press in his Charter ; 
but this was a promise he could not venture to keep. He 



614 NAPOLEON chap. 

meant to violate the Charter and to restore the Old Order ; 
and he knew that this could not be done if the press 
remained free. He had lived in England where he may 
have heard Richard Brinsley Sheridan when he thrilled 
the House of Commons with that famous burst of elo- 
quence, " Give them a corrupt House of Lords, give them 
a venal House of Commons, give them a tyrannical Prince, 
give them a truckling Court, and let me have but an un- 
fettered Press, I will defy them to encroach a hair's- 
breadth upon the liberties of England ! " Therefore, one 
of his first acts was to gag the press with a censorship. 
"With indecent haste, this royal ordinance breaching the 
Charter was published just six days after the official publi- 
cation of the Charter itself. 

Unbridled criticism by those organs which in our 
modern system control public opinion being thus made 
impossible, other measures of similar tendency followed 
swiftly. 

Loudly condemning Napoleon's toleration of heretics, 
Jews, and non-believers, the clericals induced the King to 
compel Frenchmen of all creeds and races to suspend 
business not only on the Christian Sabbath, but on the 
festival days of the Catholic Church. 

Not satisfied with a grand religious ceremony to 
" purify " the spot upon which Louis XVI. had been guil- 
lotined, nor with having dug up bones supposed to be his 
and given them magnificent sepulture, Louis solemnly 
devoted France to the Virgin Mary, and her image was 
borne through the streets in formal procession, wherein 
the great dignitaries ambled along with lighted candles in 
their hands. 

By the Charter, the army had been specially protected. 



XLV LOUIS XVm 615 

Napoleon's soldiers still had guns in their hands and rage 
in their hearts when Talleyrand was writing out the 
pledges with which the returning Bourbons were to be 
fettered. It was highly important to soothe these troops, 
or to remove their fear that the Bourbons would deal with 
them unjustly. Hence the sixty-ninth article of the 
Charter, which declared that soldiers in active service, 
the o£Bcers and soldiers in retreat, the widows, the offi- 
cers and soldiers on the pension list, should preserve 
their rank, honors, and pensions. 

By royal ordinance (December 16, 1814) this clause 
of the Charter was violated. 

Fourteen thousand officers and sergeants were dis- 
missed on half-pay ; and the places of these battle-scarred 
heroes of the Empire were filled by five thousand nobles 
who had never seen service save with the enemies of 
France. Naval officers who had deserted the ships of 
their own country, and had served against their native 
land, were put back into the French navy, and given the 
rank they had won abroad. Veterans who had fought 
for the French Republic and the French Empire, 
from Valmy and Jemappes to Laon and Montmirail, 
found themselves officered by insolent little noblemen 
who had never smelt gunpowder. General Dupont, 
known principally for his capitulation at Baylen, was 
made minister of war. The tricolor flag which French 
soldiers had borne victoriously into every capital on the 
Continent was put away. Many of the bullet-shredded 
banners were destroyed — they and their splendid memo- 
ries being hateful to the Bourbon soul. 

The white flag of the old monarchy — a flag which living 
French soldiers knew only as the rallying-point of treason 



616 NAPOLEON chap. 

and rebellion in La Vendee — was made the national stand- 
ard. The numbers of the regiments were changed, and the 
veterans of a dozen historic campaigns lost the names by 
which they were known, and which they had made glorious 
in the arduous test of battle. The Imperial Guard was 
banished from Paris; the Swiss were again enrolled to 
defend the palace, and clad in the uniform of 1792; a 
Bourbon military household was organized, filled with 
young nobles who had never fired a shot, who were paid 
fancy salaries, and decked out in a livery which made 
all Paris titter. To complete the burlesque, they resur- 
rected and made chief officer of the palace the old 
Marquis of Chansenets, who had been Governor of the 
Tuileries on August 10, 1792, and had escaped massacre 
that day by hiding under piles of dead. 

The young Bourbon dukes. Berry and AngoulSme, knew 
nothing whatever of war, practically or otherwise ; yet they 
were put in highest military command ; and they gave them- 
selves airs which neither Wellington, Bliicher, or Napoleon 
ever assumed. These young princes of the blood-royal 
told French veterans on parade that their twenty years 
of service under the Republic and under the Empire 
were but twenty years of brigandage. When Napo- 
leon's Old Guard failed to manoeuvre as the youthful 
Duke of Angouleme would have them do, they were 
sneeringly advised to go to England to learn their drill. 
Does a colonel so displease the Duke of Berry that he must 
be cashiered, disgraced? The haughty Bourbon tears off 
the epaulets with his own hand ! At another time the 
same doughty warrior strikes a soldier on parade. Word 
goes out that a monument is to be raised to the invading 
emigres whom English vessels had landed at Quiberon in 



XLv LOUIS XVIII 617 

1795, and whom the republicans had slaughtered there. 
Honors to these being granted, Pichegru and Georges 
Cadoudal were not forgotten. Their names were mentioned 
with honor, masses recited for the repose of their souls, 
and a patent of nobility granted to Cadoudal's family. 

By the Charter, laws were to be made by king, peers, and 
deputies acting together. In actual practice the King 
made his own laws. From the mouths of such men as 
Laine, whom Napoleon had thoroughly understood and 
denounced, the gospel of non-resistance was heard in all its 
ancient simplicity, " If the King wills it, the law wills it." 

Incredible as it may seem, the members of the old Par- 
liament of Paris met at a private house, and drew up a 
protest against the Charter. With one accord nobles 
and priests began to speak of the return of feudalism, 
of seignorial rights, of tithes, of benefices, of exclusive 
chase, and of the confiscated lands. The clergy of Paris, 
in their address to the King (August, 1814), expressed 
their earnest desire for the restoration of "that old 
France, in which were intermingled, without distinction, 
in every heart, those two sacred names, — God and 
King." 

At least one sermon was preached in which those citi- 
zens who did not restore to the nobles and the Church the 
lands which the Revolution had taken away were threat- 
ened with the doom of Jezebel — and they should he de- 
voured hy dogs. Three hundred petitions were found at 
one time lying upon the table of the Bourbon minister of 
the interior, sent there by distressed Catholics who declared 
that their priests refused them absolution on account of their 
being owners of national properties. To the trembling dev- 
otee, the poor slave of superstition, the priest said, " Sur- 



618 NAPOLEON chap. 

render to Church and nobles the land you bought and paid 
for, else the gates of heaven shall remain shut to you ! " 
Under the spell of clerical duress many a middle-class and 
peasant proprietor swapped good land for a verbal free pas- 
sage to the new Jerusalem. Many nobles, imitating a king 
who had mentally abolished all changes since 1789, began to 
claim forgotten dues and to exercise offensive feudal privi- 
leges. The Duke of Wellington himself acted the grand 
seigneur of the Old Regime ; and with a cavalcade of 
friends and a pack of hounds went charging at his pleas- 
ure over the crops of the farmers around Paris, trampling 
their young grain with serene disregard of peasant rights. 
These nobles of old France, who had fled from the dangers 
of the Revolution, and who had been restored by Napo- 
leon, or by foreign bayonets, were as proud, as intolerant, 
as though they had accomplished the, Bourbon restoration 
by themselves. They regarded the nobles of Napoleon's 
creation with unconcealed contempt. The wives of men 
whose fathers had been ennobled for shady services to 
shadier Bourbon kings, looked with lofty scorn upon the 
ladies of such men as Marshal Ney, whom Napoleon had 
ennobled for service as gallant as any soldier ever rendered 
to France. To mark beyond all mistake the dividing 
line between the old nobility and the new, the military 
schools were reestablished, in which a hundred years of 
nobility were necessary for admission — another violation 
of the Charter. 

Louis XVIII. was not devoid of talent, nor of worldly 
wisdom ; but he was not the man to contrast favorably with 
Napoleon. It was his misfortune to be personally repul- 
sive. Like his brother, Louis XVI. he was swinish in 
tastes and habits. So fat that he could not mount a horse. 



XLV LOUIS XVIII 619 

SO unwieldy that he could only waddle about in velvet 
gaiters, he was no man's hero — nor woman's either. 
Those who loved the ancient system were compelled 
to use him, not because they loved Am, but because they 
adored the system. 

Gifted with small talent for governing, how could he 
bring order out of the chaos Napoleon's fall had left? 
How could he reconcile the intemperate greed of the 
partisans of the Old Order with the advocates of liberal 
ideas in France ? How could he harmonize emancipated 
peasants with lords of Church and State who were clamor- 
ous to re enslave them ? How could he restore prosperity 
to the French manufacturer suddenly ruined by the flood 
of English goods, which flood Napoleon had so long 
dammed with his Continental system? And when the 
cur^ of St. Roch refused holy burial to an actress, how 
could the feeble Louis control either arrogant priest or 
indignant, riotous friends of the actress ? And how could 
he prevent all France from remembering that once before 
when this same priest had refused Christian burial to an 
opera dancer, the iron hand of Napoleon Bonaparte had 
fallen upon the unchristian cur^, inflicting chastisement, 
and the reproof that " Jesus Christ commanded us to pray 
even for our enemies " ? 

No wonder, then, that when Carnot published a memo- 
rial, arraigning the government for its breaches of faith, 
and pointing out its rapid progress to absolutism, the book 
had a vast circulation. Chateaubriand was brought for- 
ward to write a reply, and he wrote it ; but even Chateau- 
briand could not slay facts with a pen, though the 
courtiers at the palace seem to have believed that he 
had done so. 



620 NAPOLEON chap. 

Such was the Bourbon restoration. Undoing much of 
the work of the Revolution, it menaced all. Apparently 
it was only a question of time when France would be 
clothed again in the political and religious garb of 1789. 
Those who had flattered themselves that they were 
getting constitutional monarchy in exchange of Napoleon's 
despotism, soon realized that the Bourbon system had 
most of Napoleon's vices and none of his virtues. Talley- 
rand, Fouch^, and Company had expected to rule the king- 
dom as constitutional ministers. They found that their 
influence was nothing when opposed by such royalist 
courtiers as the empty-headed Blacas. Three months did 
not elapse after Talleyrand and Fouch^ had plotted the 
downfall of Napoleon before they were plotting the over- 
throw of Louis XVIII. 

****** 

At length the Congress of Nations assembled at Vienna 
(September, 1814), and a very grand gathering of nota- 
bilities it was. The Czar of Russia, the kings of Prussia, 
Denmark, Bavaria, and Wiirtemberg, the Emperor Francis 
of Austria, were present in person ; the kings of England 
and France were represented by Lord Castlereagh and 
Prince Talleyrand, respectively ; Saxony, Naples, and 
other small states were represented by delegations more 
or less official, and more or less recognized. 

Statesmen of many countries, diplomats, envoys, agents, 
male and female, attended in great numbers ; and in fStes, 
banquets, balls, excursions, and miscellaneous amusements 
some $50,000 each day were gayly consumed. 

Faithless in their dealings with Napoleon, the allied 
kings had been distrustful of each other; behind public 
treaties secret agreements had lurked, and now at the 



XLT LOUIS XVIII 821 

Congress of Vienna these underhand dealings began to 
crop out. Ostensibly Napoleon had been overthrown by 
a grand, brotherly cooperation of all the European mon- 
archs. Ostensibly the motive of this grand, brotherly co- 
operation had been to liberate the people of Europe from 
the grinding tyranny of Napoleonic government. 

No sooner had eminently wise heads begun to wag at 
this congress, loosening eminently sage tongues, than it 
appeared that Russia, Prussia, Austria, and England had 
made a secret bargain, quite a while ago, to divide at their 
own pleasure the territories of which they had stripped the 
too ambitious Emperor of the French. Consequently, the 
representatives of these four Christian powers began to 
hold little meetings of their own, to readjust the map of 
Europe, shutting the door in the face of the eminent Tal- 
leyrand and lesser lights who had come there to wield 
influence on a variety of subjects. This concert of the 
four Christian powers, to the utter ignoring of other 
powers, likewise Christian, would have resulted in a new 
map of Europe, just suited to their own views but for one 
thing. In reaching their secret agreement to shut out the 
other powers, they had failed to come to an agreement 
among themselves. 

If four royal and Christian victors secretly agree to 
monopolize the spoils., it is obviously of the utmost impor- 
tance that they should not fall out while dividing the loot. 
Russia, Austria, Prussia, and England were in harmony 
so far as agreeing that those four should take everything 
which Napoleon had lost ; but the Congress of Vienna had 
barely passed the stage of mutual congratulations, and a 
solemn return of thanks to God, before the row between 
the four robber powers began. The Czar demanded all of 



622 NAPOLEON char 

Poland ; Prussia all of Saxony ; Austria's eager eyes were 
fixed upon Italy, and England stiffened her grip on colo- 
nies generally. 

A great deal has been said in praise of the masterly 
manner in which Talleyrand forced open the door, and 
led France again to the council board of nations. 
His boasted diplomacy seems to have amounted to no 
more than this : the four powers mentioned quarrelled 
among themselves, and France found her opportunity to 
take sides. Talleyrand made good the opening thus 
offered, but surely he was not the only Frenchman who 
could have done so. France had not been obliterated : 
she was still the France of 1792, which had successfully 
resisted all Europe. If the four great powers found them- 
selves about to fight, two against two, was it owing to 
Talleyrand's genius alone that France was courted by 
one party to the feud? Surely not. It was owing to 
the greatness of France — not the greatness of Talley- 
rand. 

Louis XVIII. could have brought into the field not 
only the remnants of Napoleon's army in the late campaign, 
but also the army with which Soult had fought Welling- 
ton, as well as the troops which the Treaty of Paris had 
released from northern prisons and garrison towns. 

In a war which enlisted the support of the French peo- 
ple, half a million men could easily have been armed ; 
hence we can readily understand why Austria and Eng- 
land, enraged by the greed of Russia and Prussia, signed 
a secret treaty with France in January 1815. 

However, the spirit of compromise worked with the 
Congress of Vienna ; and to avoid such a dreadful war as 
was on the eve of breaking out among the allied kings, the 



XLV LOUIS XVIII 623 

Czar was allowed to take nearly all of Poland ; and Prus- 
sia had her way with Saxony; for while they gave her 
only half of Saxony itself, they made up for the other half 
by giving her more than an equivalent on the Rhine. 

Juggling with the doctrine of " legitimacy," and claim- 
ing that all thrones must be restored to princes who were 
rulers " by the grace of God," and not by the choice of the 
people, Talleyrand seems to have brought the powers to 
agree that Murat should be ousted from Naples, and the 
Bourbons restored. Bernadotte could not be treated like- 
wise, because he was the adopted son of the legitimate 
King of Sweden ! 

He • was not only confirmed in his high office, but the 
English fleet had been sent to aid him in seizing the prey 
which had been promised him as the price of his waging 
war upon his mother-country. Norway, which Napoleon 
had refused to promise him, and which the Czar had 
promised, was torn from Denmark by force, and handed 
over to Sweden, in spite of all the Norwegians themselves 
could do. 



Informed of all that was passing in France, in Italy, and 
at the Vienna Congress, Napoleon prepared to make a bold 
dash for his throne. He communicated secretly with 
Murat, with various Italian friends, with various friends 
in France. Vague rumors began to circulate among his 
old soldiers that he would reappear in the spring. 

Did he make a secret treaty with Austria, detaching 
her from the European alliance? There is some reason 
to believe that he did. He repeatedly declared at St. 
Helena that such a treaty had been made ; and the author 



624 NAPOLEON chap. 

of the Private Memoirs of the Court of Louis XVIII. cor- 
roborates him. In that curious, interesting book a copy of 
the alleged treaty is given. 

Napoleon himself is reported to have said that the con- 
spiracy which Fouch^ had been organizing among the 
army officers forced him to leave Elba three months 
earlier than he had intended. This is important, if true, 
for it is conceded that had he waited three months longer 
his chances of success would have been immensely im- 
proved — provided that he had not in the meantime been 
seized as a prisoner of war or assassinated. 

Concealing his design to the last moment. Napoleon 
gathered up his little army of eleven hundred men, went 
on board a small flotilla at Porto Ferrajo, February 15, 1815, 
and set sail for France. His mother and his sister looked 
on in tears while the troops were embarking, and the 
Emperor himself was deeply affected. As he embraced 
his mother and bade her farewell, he said, "I must go 
now, or I shall never go." 



At the Tuileries on the night of March 2, 1815, a 
curious scene was witnessed in the saloon of the Abb^ 
d'Andr^, director-general of the royal police. 

Quite a number of people being present, conversation 
fell upon certain ugly rumors concerning Elba. A gen- 
tleman just from Italy spoke of the active movements of 
Napoleon's agents. It was said that the Emperor was 
engaged in some hostile preparations. The gentleman 
from Italy evidently made an impression upon the com- 
pany, and created a feeling of uneasiness. The mere 
thought of Napoleon Bonaparte breaking loose from Elba, 



XLV LOUIS XVni 625 

and landing in France, was enough of itself to materially 
increase the chilliness of a night in March to the Bourbon 
group. 

But the Abbe d'Andr^ was equal to the emergency. 
As director-general of police it was his business to 
know what Napoleon was doing, and he knew. 

Rising from his chair, and striding to the fireplace, he 
faced the company, and harangued them thus : — 

"It is certainly a very extraordinary thing that right- 
thinking people should be the first to find fault with the 
government. For heaven's sake, ladies and gentlemen, 
do give the ministers credit for common sense ! If you 
think them indifferent to passing events, you are strangely 
mistaken. They watch everything, see everything, and take 
precautions against everything. Do not be alarmed about 
Elba. Every step Bonaparte takes is carefully noted. Elba 
is surrounded by numerous cruisers. All who come and all 
who go are carefully examined. Government receives a 
daily report of all that takes place there. Now, to convince 
you that your alarms are silly, I will read you the report 
we received yesterday." 

With this the complacent police minister drew from 
his pocket the official bulletin, and read it. His agent 
represented that Napoleon was reduced to a very low state 
of health, that he had the scurvy, and was assailed by the 
infirmities of premature old age ; that he rarely went out, 
and that he would sometimes be seen on the seashore 
amusing himself by tossing pebbles into the sea — a sure 
sign of approaching lunacy. And so forth. 

Having read this valuable report, d'Andr^ looked down 
upon his auditors with a glance of triumph. He had 
demonstrated to his complete satisfaction that Napoleon 
2s 



626 NAPOLEON chap. 

was not only in Elba, but that he was pitching idle pebbles 
into a listless sea, and was on the direct route to the lunatic 
asylum. 

This was March 2 ; on the day previous Napoleon had 
landed at Cannes, and was marching upon Paris ! 

The shock which Europe felt when the signal telegraph 
flashed the news that the lion was loose again, was such as 
Europe had probably never felt before, and will probably 
never feel again. It paralyzed the King and the court at 
the Tuileries; it created consternation among the kings 
and statesmen at the Congress of Vienna. The royalist 
lady who wrote the Memoirs of the Court of Louis 
XVIII.^ declares that the King's ministers looked like 
men who had seen a ghost. They were frightened into 
such imbecility that they were incapable of forming any 
plan or giving any sane advice. 

On the other hand, Wellington's belief was that Napo- 
leon had acted on false information, and that the King 
would "destroy him without difficulty, and in a short 
time." 

How Wellington ever managed to conjure up the 
mental picture of Napoleon being destroyed by Louis 
XVIII. is one of the psychological mysteries. 

The man who, of all men, best knew that Louis XVIII. 
could never stand his ground against Napoleon was 
Louis himself ; and he began to arrange to go out at one 
gate while Napoleon came in at the other. Proclamations 
he issued, but no man read them. A price he set on 
Napoleon's head, but no man was eager to earn it. 
Generals and troops he sent to stop the daring intruder, 
but the troops cried "Live the Emperor ! " and the officers 
had to flee, or join the Napoleonic procession. The 



XLT LOUIS XVIII 627 

Duchess of AngoulSme, daughter of Louis XVI., ex- 
horted the soldiers at Bordeaux, but even her appeals 
fell flat. The Count of Artois and Marshal Macdonald 
were equally unsuccessful at Lyons ; their troops deserted 
them, and they were forced to gallop away. Marshal Ney 
was quite sure that he could manage the soldiers com- 
mitted to him, and that he could cage the monster from 
Elba. Pledging his word to the quaking King, he set 
forth upon his errand, drew up his troops, harangued 
them, and proposed the capture of Napoleon. They 
laughed at him, drowned his voice in cries of " Live the 
Emperor ! " and the inconstant Ney fell into the current, 
surrendered to his men, proclaimed his adherence to the 
man he had been sent to capture, and went in person to 
lay his offer of service at the feet of his old master ! 

Sadly Louis XVIII. turned to Blacas upon whom he had 
too trustfully leaned for guidance and counsel. " Blacas, 
you are a good fellow, but I was grievously deceived when 
I mistook your devotedness for talent." With nobody to 
fight for him, it was time he was leaving ; and on the 
night of March 19 he left. With him on his doleful way 
to the frontier went a terror-stricken renegade, who dreaded 
of all things that Napoleon should lay hands upon him, — 
Marmont, the Arnold of France. 



CHAPTER XLVI 

T\URING the voyage from Elba to France, Napoleon had 
been in the best of spirits, moving about familiarly 
among his men, and chatting freely upon all subjects. He 
had not told them where they were going, but probably 
they little needed telling. All must have felt that they 
were bound for France. 

The passage was full of peril, for French cruisers were 
often in sight. One of these came quite near, so much so 
that Napoleon ordered his guards to take off their bear- 
skin caps and to lie down upon the deck. The commander 
of the French vessel hailed Napoleon's brig, and recogniz- 
ing it as from Elba, asked, " How's the Emperor ? " Na- 
poleon himself seized the speaking-trumpet and replied, 
"He is wonderfully well." 

At length the companions of the Emperor were told that 
they were bound for France, and those who could write 
were called around him to copy two proclamations he 
intended to scatter abroad upon landing. He had himself 
written these in Elba, but nobody present could read them 
— not even himself. 

Casting these into the sea, he dictated two others, — one 
for his old soldiers, the other for the nation at large. He 

628 



CHAP. XLvi THE EETURN FROM ELBA 629 

revised these papers ten times before they satisfied him, 
and then he set all hands making copies. Engaged thus, 
they came within sight of France, and they greeted the 
shores with enthusiastic shouts. 

It was about five o'clock in the evening of March 1, 1815, 
that Napoleon and his little army landed near Cannes, and 
bivouacked in a meadow surrounded by olive trees, close 
to the shore. A captain and twenty-five men, sent to Antibes 
to rouse the garrison and bring it over to Napoleon, 
entered the town crying, " Live the Emperor ! " without ex- 
planation or further statement; and the people of the place, 
knowing nothing of Napoleon's landing, took these men, 
who had suddenly come screaming through their quiet 
town, to be lunatics. The royal commandant had sufii- 
cient presence of mind to shut the town gates ; and so the 
gallant twenty-six, who went to surprise and capture, 
got surprised and captured. 

" We have made a bad beginning," said Napoleon, when 
news of this mishap reached him. " We have nothing to do 
but to march as fast as we can, and get to the mountain 
passes before the news of our arrival." 

The moon rose, and at midnight the Emperor began his 
march. He had brought a few horses from Elba, had 
bought a few more from peasants after landing, and thus 
some of his officers were mounted, while he himself rode 
in a carriage given him by his sister Pauline, and which 
he had brought from Elba. They marched all night, pass- 
ing through silent, moonlit villages, where the people, 
roused by reports of something unusual afoot, — the pi- 
rates had come, some said, — stood gaping at the march- 
ing troops, responding with shrugs of the shoulders to the 
shouts of " Live the Emperor ! " It was not until the 



630 NAPOLEON chap. 

column had passed through Grasse, a town of six thou- 
sand inhabitants, and had halted on a hill beyond, that the 
people seemed to realize what was happening. The pirate 
alarm disappeared, the fires of enthusiasm began to glow, 
and with glad shout of " Live the Emperor ! " the town- 
folk came running toward the camp, bearing provisions 
for the troops. From this time the country people were 
certain that Napoleon had really come back, and his 
march became one of triumph. Leaving cannon and car- 
riage at Grasse, the column pressed on toward C^r^non 
by mountain paths still covered with snow, the Emperor 
marching on foot among his grenadiers. When he stum- 
bled and fell on the rough road, they laughed at him ; and 
he could hear them calling him, among themselves, " Our 
little monk." Reaching Gap on the 5th, he printed his 
proclamations ; and he began to scatter them by thousands. 
And never before did proclamations find such willing 
readers, or win such popular favor. Advancing toward 
Grenoble, the advance-guard under Cambronne encoun- 
tered a battalion of six thousand troops, sent to stop the 
march of the invaders. The royalist commander refused 
to parley with Napoleon's officers, and threatened to fire. 
Cambronne sent to inform the Emperor of what had 
occurred. Napoleon was riding in an old carriage, picked 
up at Gap, when this report reached him. Mounting his 
horse, he galloped forward to within a hundred yards of the 
hostile battalion. Not a cheer greeted him. Turning to 
Bertrand, the disappointed Emperor remarked, "They 
have deceived me, but no matter. Forward march ! " 
Throwing the bridle of his horse to Bertrand, he went on 
foot toward the royal troops. 

"Fire!" shouted the officer, drawing his sword. And 



XLVi THE RETURN FROM ELBA 631 

then Napoleon, unbuttoning that familiar gray overcoat, 
and fronting them with that familiar cocked hat, made 
the famous address which broke down all military oppo- 
sition between Grenoble and Paris, sweeping thousands 
of bayonets out of his way with a word. 

" What ! My children, do you not recognize me ? It 
is your Emperor. If there be one among you who would 
kill his general, he can do it. Here I am ! " 

" Live the Emperor ! " came the answer of six thousand 
men, as they melted into tears, broke ranks, and crowded 
around him to fall at his feet, kiss his hands, and touch 
the hem of his garment. 

The officer who had ordered them to fire had a good 
horse and a fair start ; hence he managed to escape. 

The six thousand who had come to capture Napoleon 
turned and marched with him. By this time the country 
was aroused on all sides, and crowds flocked around the 
column, shouting " Live the Emperor ! " Advancing be- 
yond Vizille, the Emperor was met by Colonel Labedoyere, 
who had brought his regiment to join Napoleon's ranks. 
With cries of joy the troops mingled, and Napoleon took 
the ardent young colonel in his arms, pressing him to his 
breast, and saying, "Colonel, it is you who replace me 
upon the throne ! " Onward then to Grenoble, where the 
gates had been closed, and the defences manned to resist 
the invader. 

It was dark when Napoleon arrived before the walls 
He ordered Labedoyere to address the troops within 
This was done, and there were cries of "Live the Em 
peror ! " from within the city. But the royal command 
ant had the keys, and the gates could not be opened 
"Room! room!" came the cry from within. It was the 



632 NAPOLEON chap. 

shout of citizens of the town coming with beams to batter 
down the gates. 

The work was soon done, the way was open, and the 
Emperor's column found itself surrounded by a multitude 
as enthusiastic as any they had met. With uncontrol- 
lable transports they laid hold of Napoleon, pulled him 
from his horse, and bore him forward in their arms. 

That night was one long festival for soldiers, citizens, 
and peasants ; and next morning a great crowd followed 
him when he set out for Lyons. There, upon an immenser 
scale, was repeated the ovation of Grenoble. Royal offi- 
cers lost all control of their troops. Marshal Macdonald 
and the Count of Artois were utterly abandoned; and 
when they fled, were followed by a solitary trooper, to 
whom Napoleon afterward gave the cross of the Legion 
of Honor. For four days, this great city of southern 
France testified in every possible way its unbounded joy 
at the Emperor's return. It is said that twenty thousand 
people were constantly under his windows. It is certain 
that he never forgot these glorious days — almost the last 
days which he might name glorious. His journey was now 
no longer an adventure ; once more he was a great power 
among the nations of earth. He had committed no vio- 
lence, had shed no blood. The love and the admiration 
of a gallant people were his again — balm for all those 
wounds of last year. In his address, at his departure, his 
closing words were simple and touching, " People of Lyons, 
I love you ! " and there can be no doubt that he did. 

Moving onward, he came to Auxerre on the 17th ; and 
in the evening came Marshal Ney, with something in word 
and manner which suggests that he felt what nothing so 
well describes as the term " sheepish." Very rude had he 



XLVi THE RETURN FROM ELBA 633 

been to his Emperor in 1814 — rude, brutal, threatening. 
Now there was a change. Ney was contrite, apologetic, 
explanatory. He had been misrepresented, it seems ; and 
the newspapers had told lies about him. But Napoleon 
relieved him with : " Embrace me, my dear Ney. To me 
^ you are still the Bravest of the brave.'" 

Halting briefly at Fontainebleau on March 20, Napoleon 
spent some solitary hours in the room where he had suffered 
such agonies the year before ; and he went again into the 
garden which had been his Gethsemane. Pushing on to 
Paris, he arrived after dark and entered the Tuileries at 
nine o'clock, borne on the shoulders of his wildly enthusiastic 
friends. Five thousand young nobles of the royal body- 
guard had left Paris that morning to head the royal army, 
and oppose Napoleon's advance. The troops they expected 
to command joined their Emperor near Paris ; and the noble 
officers, left without commands, were heard in the Parisian 
saloons that evening plausibly explaining the cause of their 
failure to stop the usurper's progress. 

The great city of Paris did not go out to meet the 
returning Emperor as Grenoble and Lyons had done. 
Paris was rather indifferent. " They let me come as they 
let the other fellows go," remarked Napoleon that night. 
Thousands of soldiers had cheered him as he entered the 
capital, adoring friends had pressed him so ardently at the 
Tuileries that he had cried out, " My friends, you smother 
me ! " Elegant ladies of the imperial court, Hortense in the 
lead, had made ready to welcome him to the palace ; they 
had thrown arms about his neck and kissed him. But as 
the wifeless, childless Emperor sat by the fireside late in 
the night, almost alone, his feet up, resting on the mantel- 
piece, he looked very tired and very sad. Many old 



634 NAPOLEON chap, xlvi 

friends had met him ; many had stayed away. Paris had 
not been so warm as Lyons. France was not so unani- 
mous as he had hoped. Confidence in him, and his 
fortune and final success, was very far indeed from being 
universal. 

Bourrienne records that one of the Paris newspapers 
made note of the various stages of Napoleon's return in 
this wise : — 

"A report is circulated that the Corsican brigand has 
landed at Cannes ; " a few days later the same pen wrote : 
" Do you know what news is circulated ? They say the 
rash usurper has been received at Grenoble ; " then later 
came the announcement, " I have it from a good source 
that General Bonaparte has entered Lyons ; " then, after a 
few days, it was, " Napoleon, it appears, is at Fontaine- 
bleau ; " and on March 20 came the final, " His Majesty 
the Emperor and King alighted this evening at his palace 
of the Tuileries." 



CHAPTER XL VII 

"fTTHILE it is true that the return of the Emperor had 
not pleased the nobles, the ultramontane priests, the 
capitalists, and the intriguers who had been working for 
the Duke of Orleans, there appears to. be no doubt that 
the army and the masses of the people were sincerely- 
rejoiced. The only thing which had a tendency to cool 
the general enthusiasm was the apprehension of war. 
But Napoleon having taken great pains to make it known 
that he wished for peace, that he meant to respect the 
Treaty of Paris, and that he intended to rule as a con- 
stitutional king, the French could not fully realize the 
certainty of war. They had heard the allied kings de- 
clare that France had the right to choose her own ruler, 
and had been told that the Bourbons were restored simply 
because the Senate and other organs of public opinion 
had deposed Napoleon and selected Louis XVIII. If the 
allied kings were telling the truth in making such declara- 
tions, then the French, who had put Napoleon aside for the 
Bourbon, had as much right to put the Bourbon aside for 
Napoleon. Neither to the French people, nor to Louis 
XVIII., did it appear certain that the allied kings would 
march their armies back into France to drive out an empe- 
ror the nation had welcomed. 

Consequently the beginning of the Hundred Days was 

635 



636 NAPOLEON chap. 

marked with what General Thi^bault calls a "boundless 
enthusiasm." He was present on the night of Napoleon's 
entry into Paris; he was one of the officers sent by the 
King to stop the Emperor's advance; and Thiebault 
says that " at least twenty thousand persons were crowd- 
ing about the Tuileries. Suddenly Napoleon reappeared. 
There was an instantaneous and irresistible outburst. At 
sight of him the transports rose to such a pitch that you 
would have thought the ceilings were coming down ; then, 
as after a thunder-clap, every man came to himself, quiver- 
ing with ecstasy, and stammering like a man intoxicated." 

This first night of his return had barely passed before 
Napoleon was hard at work reorganizing his government ; 
and he continued to labor sixteen hours a day, almost with- 
out rest, to create an administration, an army, and a 
thorough system of national defence. 

As Dumas tersely states, " At his voice, France was cov- 
ered with manufactories, workshops, founderies ; and the 
armorers of the capital alone furnished as many as three 
thousand guns in twenty-four hours ; whilst the tailors 
made in the same time as many as fifteen and even eighteen 
hundred coats. At the same time the lists of the regiments 
of the line were increased from two battalions to five ; those 
of the cavalry were reenforced by two squadrons ; two 
hundred battalions of the National Guard were organized ; 
twenty marine regiments and forty regiments of the 
Young Guard were put in condition for service ; the old dis- 
banded soldiers were recalled to the standard; the conscrip- 
tions of 1814 and 1815 were raised ; soldiers and officers in 
retirement were engaged to reenter the line. Six armies 
were formed under the names of the Army of the North, 
of the Moselle, of the Rhine, of the Jura, of the Alps, and 



xLTii KEORGANIZATION 637 

of the Pyrenees; whilst a seventh, the Army of the 
Reserve, collected under the walls of Paris and of Lyons, 
which cities were to be fortified." 

Politically, Napoleon's position in France itself was full 
of trouble. Though they had cast out the Bourbons, the 
people had no intention of returning to imperial despotism. 
Liberal ideas prevailed everywhere, and Napoleon himself 
must not now hope to rule by personal sway. He must 
become the mouthpiece and the public agent of the nation, 
else he would become king of a minority faction, with the 
bulk of the nation against him. 

As an evidence of his good faith in accepting limited 
power, Napoleon called to his counsels Benjamin Constant, 
leader of the French liberals, a friend of Madame de Stael, 
and a very bitter enemy to the Emperor. Constant re- 
sponded to the invitation, and prepared an amendment to 
the constitution of the Empire, which Madame de Stael 
believed was precisely the thing needed to rally all France 
to Napoleon's support, and to make certain the future of 
the cause of liberalism. 

This famous document, known as "The Act Addi- 
tional," did not vindicate Madame de Stael's judgment. 
It angered all parties, more or less, for it was what modern 
politicians would call " a straddle." It contained enough 
democracy to offend the imperialists ; and enough imperial- 
ism to disgust the democrats. 

Let it be remembered that the rallying cry of the 
people who had flocked to the returning Emperor had 
been : " Down with the nobles ! Down with the priests ! " 
So intense had been this feeling, this terrible antagonism 
to the abuses of the Old Order, that Napoleon himself, at 
Lyons, had. whispered, " This is madness." In Paris he 



638 NAPOLEON chap. 

had found the same spirit. Nobles and priests were furi- 
ously hated, not so much on personal grounds, as because 
they stood for an abominable system. 

By tens of thousands the workmen of Paris had paraded 
before the Tuileries, making the air ring with the old 
war cries of the Revolution, and chanting fiercely the 
song whose burden is " With the guts of the last of the 
priests we will strangle the last of the kings ! " 

Now, of all men, Napoleon was the least likely to 
throw himself into the arms of men like these. He had 
no objection to nobles if they were his nobles ; nor to 
priests if they were his priests ; nor, indeed, to kings if 
they were his kings. Perfectly willing that the oppor- 
tunities of life should be offered to all men alike, whether 
peasants or princes, and democrat enough to wish that all 
men should be equal in the eye of the law, — free to 
choose their vocations, their religion, and their political 
creed, — he had not the slightest idea of opening the 
flood-gates of that pent-up democracy, socialism, and 
communism which had horrified him in the days of 
his youth. 

In the "Act Additional" provisions were made for a 
representative government and for the responsibility of 
ministers. Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, 
security for person and property, were also guaranteed. 

The good effects of these concessions were nullified by 
the creation of a hereditary House of Lords, which, it is 
said. Napoleon opposed, but which was adopted in spite of 
him. General Thiebault thought that this unpopular 
feature of the new Constitution lost the Emperor two 
hundred thousand men, who, otherwise, would have joined 
his army. 



XLVii REORGANIZATION 689 

This "Act Additional" was submitted to the people, 
and adopted, but the vote was light. 

By a decree which he had issued from Lyons, he had 
abolished the Senate and the legislative body. In their 
place was to be put the new House of Lords, and a legis- 
lative assembly. Urged by Lafayette, and other Liberals 
whose support he could not throw away. Napoleon ordered 
the elections much earlier than he had intended — and 
much earlier than was good for him, as it afterward ap- 
peared. 

One by one grievous disappointments fell upon Napo- 
leon and his people. It became evident that his return 
meant war. The Congress of Vienna declared that he 
had broken the Treaty of Fontainebleau, and declared him 
an outlaw. The armies of the kings were ordered to 
halt in their homeward march, and to set out for France 
again. Napoleon's letters to the Allies could not even be 
delivered ; his couriers were turned back at the frontier. 

If Austria had made a secret agreement with him, it 
became apparent that nothing was to be hoped for in that 
quarter. 

Murat had ruined everything by madly plunging into 
the papal states, proclaiming Italian unity and indepen- 
dence, and dashing himself to pieces in an attempt far 
beyond his means and his ability. Austria believed that 
Murat was acting at the instigation of Napoleon, and this 
unfounded suspicion led her to think, as Napoleon said, 
that he had played her false. 

Mu rat's army melted away in the face of Austrian and 
English opposition ; the Italians did not rise as he had 
hoped ; and the rash, unfortunate King of Naples fled to 
France, and hid himself near Toulon. From this place 



640 NAPOLEON chap. 

of concealment he sent to Napoleon the offer of his 
services ; but the great man who had forgiven Ney, and 
reemployed Fouche, drew the line at Murat. More's the 
pity! In an army which had a general's place for the 
infamous Bourmont, there surely might have been found 
room for the finest cavalry leader in the world — a man 
who had sinned, but had bitterly repented ; a man whose 
splendid sword might have made Ligny another Jena, and 
Waterloo another Dresden. 

As it was, Murat's failure strengthened the Allies, and 
cast a gloom over France. 

Two things Napoleon needed above all others, — time 
and money. He had only a few weeks in which to create 
means of defence against a world in arms ; and the lack 
of money made it impossible for him to utilize to the best 
advantage even these few weeks. Supported only by 
silver and gold (arrant cowards in times of war), and 
the note currency of the Bank of France, he was com- 
bating nations which redoubled their resources by the 
issue of paper money. He received liberal voluntary 
contributions ; Hobhouse relates that it was a frequent 
occurrence for rolls of bank notes to be handed the 
Emperor while he was reviewing the troops. But, after 
all, such a resource yields comparatively little; and the 
scarcity of money seriously crippled the great captain in 
preparing for his last fight. 

Before he sets out to join the army we see Napoleon 
in two characters which will never fade from the memory : 
one as the successor of Charlemagne and Emperor of the 
French ; the other as the private citizen with his personal 
griefs. 

Time being so short, it was decided that the electoral 



XLVif EEOEGANIZATION 641 

colleges of France should have a grand open-air meeting 
as in the days of Charles the Great — a Champ de Mai^ 
to be held in the Field of Mars. 

On the 1st of June, 1815, deputations from all the 
constituencies of the Empire, together with those from the 
army, and every public body, assembled in that historic 
amphitheatre where the first Festival of the Federation had 
been held twenty odd years before. Sixty thousand troops 
added to the pomp of the ceremony, and countless throngs 
of Parisians crowded the field. There was inspiring 
music, impressive religious forms, and a great taking of 
oaths to the new Constitution. Napoleon himself took 
the oath, distributed the eagles to his enthusiastic soldiers, 
and in a far-reaching, sharply pitched voice delivered one 
of his masterly addresses. 

" Emperor, consul, soldier, I owe everything to the 
people. In prosperity, in adversity, on the field of battle, 
in the council room, on the throne, in exile, France has 
been the soul and constant object of my thought and my 
efforts." 

How could Frenchmen listen to words like these and 
not burst into cheers ? Had he been dressed that day 
in simple uniform instead of absurd court costume; 
had he kept his baleful brothers — Joseph, Lucien, and 
Jerome — in the background instead of at the fore- 
front; had he made his appeal and trusted his cause 
more unreservedly to the people, the Qhamp de Mai 
might have been a colossal repetition of his triumph at 
Grenoble and Lyons. As it was, Paris regarded it as 
■ a fine spectacle, an exhibition to be seen and applauded — 
nothing more. It touched the heart of the army ; it did 
not touch the larger heart of the French people. 

2t 



,U 



642 NAPOLEON chap. 

When the chambers met, the Emperor delivered still a 
more successful speech. Hobhouse, who was present, says 
that when he had finished with the sentence, pronounced 
in a louder tone and with a flourish of the right hand, 
" The sacred cause of country will triumph ! " he rose 
quickly from his throne, "bowed to the assembly, and 
retired amidst thunders of applause, which accompanied 
him from the throne to the door, and obliged him several 
times to turn round and salute the assembly as he was 
ascending the stairs of the area. He appeared highly de- 
lighted. Indeed, nothing could exceed the enthusiasm, 
which was the more gratifying as it proceeded from such 
an assembly." When we remember that this assembly of 
notables was already hostile to Napoleon, was already cut 
up into factions, only one of which was devoted to him, 
and that it was an open secret that these notables would 
openly oppose him the moment the fortunes of war should 
go against him, his oratorical triumph becomes all the more 
remarkable. 

So much for the Emperor, his labors, his speeches, his 
dangers, his mighty efforts to conquer an impossible situ- 
ation; we can admire it all, marvel at his genius, courage, 
resources, and versatility ; but it is only when we go with 
him to Malmaison that we draw near to the -maw, feel for 
him, feel with him, and realize how greatly he has been 
misunderstood. He had always been a good son ; he had 
been but too affectionate, too generous, to his sisters and 
brothers ; he had been to both his wives one of the most 
tenderly indulgent of husbands. 

It seems that he had continued to hope, almost to the 
last, that Maria Louisa would come to him at Elba, and 
bring his boy. A lot of fireworks, we are told, had fallen 



XLVii KEORGANIZATION 643 

into his possession, and he had kept them carefully, ready 
to be used when wife and child should come. He knew, 
at length, that neither would ever see him again. He had 
been told of Neipperg, and the true reason why Maria 
Louisa had ceased to write. " Meva, tell papa I am still 
very fond of him ! " and this message, sent almost by 
stealth, was all that M^neval could bring to the father 
from the little son who was held at Vienna. No wonder 
that Napoleon should be found sitting before a portrait of 
his son, with tears coursing down his cheeks. 

Josephine was dead. The fall of the Emperor, her hero, 
her Cid, had bewildered and unnerved her. Frightened at 
the din of war that shook the whole realm, she had lived 
in terror at Malmaison. The allied kings paid her every 
attention, and in showing the King of Prussia over her 
lovely grounds when she was ill, broken out with an erup- 
tion, she had, it is said, brought on a fatal relapse. Mur- 
muring the words " Elba " — " Bonaparte " — she died, 
while her hero was yet in exile. It is a revelation of his 
true character that before setting out on his last campaign 
he should claim one day out of the few fate gave him, and 
devote it to memories, to regrets, to recollections of the 
frail, but tender-hearted woman who had warmed to him 
when all the world was growing cold. He went to Mal- 
maison, almost alone, and, with Hortense, walked over 
the grounds, seeing the old familiar places, and thinking 
of the " old familiar faces." He lingered in the garden he 
himself had made, and in which he used to love to work 
when he was First Consul, surrounded by trees and flowei-s, 
and inhaling the breath of nature. He used to say that he 
could work better there than anywhere else. He wandered 
through the park, looking out on the trees he had planted 



644 NAPOLEON cha». 

in those brilliant days long ago. Every spot had its silent 
reminder of glories that were gone, of friends he would 
see no more. 

He had asked to be told everything about Josephine, 
— her last days, her sickness, her dying hours ; no details 
were too trivial to escape him. And as they told the story 
he would break in with exclamations of interest, of fond- 
ness, of sorrow. On this visit to the chateau he wanted 
to see everything that could remind him of her, and of 
their old life together — the death-chamber at the last. 
Here he would have no companion. " My daughter, let me 
go in here alone ! " and he put Hortense back, entered, and 
closed the door. He remained a long while, and when 
he came out his eyes showed that he had been weeping. 



His personal appearance at this time is thus described 
by Hobhouse, who saw him at a military review at the 
Tuileries : " His face was deadly pale ; his jaws overhung, 
but not so much as I had heard ; his lips thin, but partially 
curling, so as to give his mouth an inexpressible sweetness. 
He had the habit of retracting the lips and apparently 
chewing. His hair was dusky brown, scattered thinly 
over his temples ; the crown of his head was bald. One 
of the names of affection given him of late by his soldiers 
is ' Our little monk.' He was not fat in the upper part of 
his body, but projected considerably in the abdomen, so 
much so, that his linen appeared beneath his waistcoat. 
He generally stood with his hands knit behind him, or 
folded before him, but sometimes unfolded them, played 
with his nose, took snuff three or four times, and looked 
at his watch. He seemed to have a laboring in his chest, 



XLVii KEORGANIZATION 645 

sighing or swallowing. He very seldom spoke, but when 
he did, smiled, in some sort, agreeably. He looked about 
him, not knitting but joining his eyebrows, as if to see 
more minutely, and went through the whole tedious cere- 
mony with an air of sedate impatience." 

Hobhouse speaks of Napoleon's reception at the opera 
where Talma was to play Hector. " The house was choked 
with spectators, who crowded into the orchestra. The airs 
of La Victoire and the Marseillaise were called for, and 
performed amidst thunders of applause, the spectators 
joining in the burden of the song. . . . Napoleon entered 
at the third scene. The whole mass rose with a shout 
which still thunders in my ears. The vivats continued 
until the Emperor, bowing right and left, seated himself, 
and the play recommenced. The audience received every 
speech which had the least reference to their returned hero 
with unnumbered plaudits." 

General Thidbault in his Memoirs declares that Napo- 
leon was no longer the same man he had once been ; that 
his face wore a greenish tinge and had lost its expression ; 
that his mouth had lost its witchery ; " his very head no 
longer had the pose which used to characterize the con- 
queror of the world ; and his gait was as perplexed as 
his demeanor and gestures were undecided. Everything 
about him seemed to have lost its nature and to be broken 
up." 

The lady who composed the Memoirs of the Court of 
Louis XVIII. saw Napoleon holding a review at the 
Tuileries, and had a conversation with him afterward. 

" Bonaparte was dressed that day in a green uniform. 
I have been told that it was the same which he afterward 
wore at Waterloo, and which he wore, almost in tatters, 



646 NAPOLEON chap, xlvu 

at St. Helena. He had been reviewing some troops that 
morning at the Champ-de-Mars, and his coat, hat, and 
boots were still dusty. ... I looked in vain for the fire 
which once beamed in his eyes. He stooped more than 
usual; his head almost hung upon his breast; his com- 
plexion was yellow, his countenance melancholy and 
thoughtful, and his little hat drawn almost over his eyes, 
gave him a gloomy expression. His movements were still 
abrupt, but this seemed merely the effect of habit. . . . 
He had altogether a wearied, harassed appearance, which 
seemed to indicate a great man extinct." 

To the same effect is the testimony of Chancellor 
Pasquier. 

Carnot said: "I do not know him again. He talks 
instead of acting, he the man of rapid decisions; he 
asks opinions, he the imperious dictator, who seemed in- 
sulted by advice ; his mind wanders, though he used to 
have the power of attending to everything, when and as 
he would ; he is sleepy, and he used to sleep and wake 
at pleasure." 



CHAPTER XLVIII 

A LL had been done that could be done — all that it was 
in his nature to do. He had equipped two hundred 
thousand men in arms, and had filled them with martial 
fire. He had called back to the service every officer who 
would come, saving Augereau, who had betrayed Lyons 
in 1814, and Murat, who had joined the Allies. He had 
courted the liberals, temporized with the Jacobins, toler- 
ated the royalists, and shut his eyes to incipient treason. 
To the Constants and La Fayettes he had said, " Gentle- 
men, don't waste time in debates on constitutional law 
while the nation is in danger ; unite with me to save her " ; 
but he knew that his appeal was wasted. To the danger- 
ous traitor Fouch^ he had said, "I ought to have you 
shot " ; but he left him minister, and knew that if battles 
were lost, Fouche would be the first to plot for the return 
of the Bourbons. 

He listened to Jacobin songs, appreciated Jacobin 
strength, and believed that he could win the fight if he 
would put on the red bonnet. But he would not. In 
Brumaire, 1799, he had said, "If I conquer with the 
Jacobins, I would then have to conquer against them." 
His opinions had not changed. If he put on the red cap 
of the Jacobins, and put guns into their hands, he might 
save his own crown ; but how about his son ? Democracy 

647 



648 NAPOLEON chap. 

once unchained, who would ever bind it again? Thus 
he would not nationalize the war — his one chance of suc- 
cess. 

With two hundred thousand men, the Emperor, who 
might have enrolled a million, turned to face all Europe. 
The allied kings already had a million men in arms, and 
England was supplying $55,000,000 a month to pay them. 
In quality, Napoleon had led few better armies than that 
of his last campaign ; but while the troops were passionately 
devoted to the Emperor, they had lost confidence in many 
of the higher officers, and went to the front dreading treach- 
ery in their leaders. 

The Russians and Austrians could not reach the Rhine 
before July ; but the armies of Bliicher and Wellington, 
about one hundred thousand each, were already in Bel- 
gium. Napoleon could strike at these with only about one 
hundred and twenty-five thousand. But as the enemy was 
widely scattered, and was not expecting immediate attack, 
he believed that he might best open the war by throwing 
himself between Wellington and Bliicher, preventing their 
junction, crushing them in detail, and thus discourage the 
coalition to such an extent that he might detach at least 
some of its members. 

Had he waited two weeks longer, he could have taken 
with him the twelve thousand troops who were putting 
down the royalists in La Vendue; but he could not foresee 
that the revolt would be quelled so soon. Other errors, 
however, were committed, for which he alone was respon- 
sible. He left his best officer, Davoust, in Paris, instead 
of employing him in the field. Had Davoust been put in 
Grouchy's place, the result of the campaign would almost 
certainly have been different. Again, he had given no con- 



xLviii WATERLOO 649 

fidence to Ney, had not even notified the marshal whether 
he was to be employed. It was so late when Ney got his 
orders that the campaign had already opened, and the 
fighting begun before he could arrive from Paris, without 
his horses, and accompanied by a single aide-de-camp. 

Another thing: the Emperor gave the command of his 
right wing, which was to act independently, to an officer 
untried in that capacity, — Grouchy ; and he did it over the 
protest of Soult and other general officers, who warned 
him that Grouchy was not the man for such a place. 

A gross blunder was made as to Bourmont. This man 
had been one of the Chouan chiefs of 1800, to whom 
Napoleon extended clemency. Pardoned, then, by the 
First Consul, he had afterwards been implicated in the 
Georges conspiracy, and had fled to Portugal. Junot 
picked him up there, took a fancy to him, got him em- 
ployed ; and the man being a good officer, won rapid pro- 
motion. In 1814 he had been one of the traitors, and had 
gone over to the Bourbons. In 1815 he fell in with the 
Napoleonic tide, and professed the zeal of a sincere im- 
perialist. Seeking employment in the army, he was con- 
temptuously refused by Davoust, who told him that he 
must perform quarantine. Most unfortunately, Lab^doyere 
and Gerard had faith in Bourmont, and the matter was 
carried to the Emperor. To Lab^doy^re, Napoleon could 
refuse nothing, and Bourmont was appointed to the com- 
mand of one of the finest divisions. 

Concentrating his army swiftly. Napoleon was near 
Charleroi, on the evening of June 14, 1815, and next day 
crossed the Sambre. 

At daybreak, on the morning of the 15th, General Bour- 
mont, two officers of his staff, and eight soldiers deserted. 



650 NAPOLEON chap. 

As Bourmont had been present at the Council of War, he 
knew the secrets of the French, and these he carried with 
him to the Allies. This treason, on the eve of battle, de- 
moralized, for a time, the entire division,, and had a 
depressing effect throughout the army. 

Another " deplorable mischance " happened on this 
morning. An order to Vandamme to advance was sent by 
a single courier, whose leg was broken by a fall of his 
horse. The order was not delivered, Vandamme did not 
make the movement, and Napoleon's manoeuvre, by which 
he had expected to cut off and capture the Prussian corps 
of Ziethen, failed. 

Bliicher, acting much more promptly than Wellington, 
concentrated his army at Fleurus, from which he retired 
on Ligny. Wellington and many of his officers were at 
the Duchess of Richmond's ball, in Brussels, on the night 
of June 15, when Napoleon's guns were heard. At 
eleven o'clock a despatch arrived which told of the French 
capture of Charleroi and advance upon Brussels. Al- 
though Wellington knew that Napoleon's army was in 
motion, he was taken by surprise at the nearness of his 
approach. Withdrawing into a private room with the 
Duke of Richmond, he called for a map, saying, "That 
damned rascal Bonaparte has humbugged me !" 

From midnight on to dawn, the English army was hurry- 
ing to the front, to concentrate and fight. Without waiting 
for Wellington or his orders, Prince Bernard, of Saxe- 
Wiemar, had already occupied Quatre-Bras. When Wel- 
lington arrived there, June 16, he passed on at once to 
a conference with Bliicher, to whom he had written a 
letter which Bliicher had received at noon. In this letter, 
Wellington had seemed to promise aid to Bliicher if he 



xLviii WATERLOO 651 

would fight at Ligny, — mentioning the positions which 
the troops of. the Anglo-Belgian army then occupied. 

The curious feature of the case is that Wellington's 
troops were not where his letter said they were, and that 
he remarked to one of his staff as he was leaving BlUcher, 
" If he fights here, he will be damnably whipped." 

This letter in which Wellington promised to help Blii- 
cher only came to light in 1876, and Lord Wolseley says 
that Wellington, " an English gentleman of the highest 
type, wholly and absolutely incapable of anything bor- 
dering on untruth or deceit, must have been misled by his 
inefficient staff." Perhaps so. But it looks marvellously 
like a case where the English gentleman of the highest 
type had been caught napping by "that damned rascal 
Bonaparte," and wanted " old Bliicher " to fight, in order 
that the British army might have time to concentrate. 
Bliicher's chief of staff, Gneisenau, held this view at the 
time, and died in that belief. So little did the opening 
events of the campaign depend upon any generalship of 
Wellington, that some of his officers had to violate his 
orders before they could reach the positions which it was 
absolutely necessary they should occupy. 

It was near five o'clock on the evening of June 15 that 
Ney, who had come from Paris to Beaumont in a post- 
chaise, and from Beaumont had travelled to Avesnes in 
a peasant's cart, bought horses from Marshal Mortier. At 
that late hour he was given command of the left wing 
of the French army, with verbal orders from Napoleon 
himself. Just what these orders were is a matter of dis- 
pute. The partisans of Ney contend that the Emperor 
said, " Go and' drive back the enemy." Napoleon and 
his sympathizers allege that the orders were to seize 



652 NAPOLEON chap. 

Quatre-Bras, and hold it. That the Emperor meant to 
give such orders, there can hardly be a doubt. On his 
way to Quatre-Bras, Ney encountered some Nassau troops 
at Frasnes, who fell back at once. Instead of advancing 
upon Quatre-Bras, Ney halted some two or three miles 
short of it, and reported to Napoleon for further orders. 
A small force of French cavalry actually entered Quatre- 
Bras, and then retired. 

The Emperor, worn out with fatigue, and suffering 
from urinary, hemorrhoidal, and other ailments, had gone 
back to Charleroi to sleep and rest. 

For reasons not fully explained, it was nine o'clock on 
the morning of the 16th before Ney was ordered positively 
to advance and capture Quatre-Bras. Had he moved 
promptly, he could even then have taken the place, for it 
was held by a few thousand Nassauers only. It was not 
until 2 P.M. that Ney attacked. A still greater delay 
marked Napoleon's own movements. It was between two 
and three o'clock in the evening before he struck the 
Prussians at Ligny. 

Here, then, were two battles raging on the same day 
only a few miles apart. Ney was making a desperate 
onset at Quatre-Bras, which he could easily have taken on 
the 15th, or early on the 16th, but which was now held by 
ever increasing numbers of the enemy. And Napoleon 
was straining every nerve to defeat the Prussians, who 
had profited enormously by his delays. 

It was at this crisis of his fortunes that he was tanta- 
lized by one of the most remarkable of military mishaps. 
A corps of twenty thousand men under D'Erlon, intended 
to act with Ney, was on its march to Quatt-e-Bras, when a 
staff-officer, Colonel de Forbin-Janson, delivered a pen- 



XLViii WATERLOO 653 

cilled. order from Napoleon to D'Erlon, which was totally 
misconstrued, and which led D'Erlon to march to the 
French left, when he should have struck the Prussians 
cross-wise, while the Emperor pressed them in front. 
D'Erlon set out, came in sight of Ligny, and created 
consternation among the French, who thought it a Prus- 
sian reenforcement. Napoleon, not expecting troops on 
his left, was forced to suspend his movements until he 
could ascertain the facts, thus losing precious time. 
Strange to say, this French corps, now that it was on the 
field, was not used at Ligny, but was countermanded by 
Ney, whom Forbin-Janson should have informed of the 
Emperor's order, and was marched back to Quatre-Bras, 
where it arrived too late to help Ney. Had it gone into 
action at either place, its aid must have been decisive. 
As it was, these twenty thousand troops were as com- 
pletely lost to the French " as though the earth had swal- 
lowed them up." 

Night found the Prussians beaten ; and a vigorous pur- 
suit, such as Murat, or La Salle, or Bessieres could have 
made, might have disorganized them for the campaign. 
But there was no pursuit. They rallied at their leisure, 
and the French did not even know next day what route 
their retreat had taken. 

After the battle Napoleon was again exhausted, and 
nothing was done to improve the victory. The Emperor 
slept, and the army waited. Next morning at seven his 
generals stood around, idle, grumbling, discouraged. Van- 
damme was saying : " Gentlemen, the Napoleon of the 
Italian campaign no longer lives. Our victory of yester- 
day will lead to nothing. You will see." 

Mr. Houssaye contends that the Emperor was not in 



654 NAPOLEON chap. 

poor condition, physically or mentally ; and he enumer- 
ates facts to prove what he says. It all depends upon 
what his standard of comparison is. Does he compare 
the French general with the English chief, — the one 
launching a host of men so swiftly and surely that they 
were upon the enemy before it was known that they had 
moved ; and the other idling in a ball-room, issuing 
late and confused orders, naming the wrong place for 
concentration, and saved only by the initiative of Prince 
Bernard, the disobedience of his own officers, and the bad 
luck which dogged the movements of the French? If 
you compare Napoleon to Wellington, one must say that 
the former was not in poor condition. But if we compare 
the Bonaparte of 1815 with Bliicher, the admission must 
be made that in sustained energy and unwavering tenacity 
of purpose, the German far exceeded his great antagonist. 
And if we contrast the Bonaparte of 1815 with the Bona- 
parte of 1796, we at once exclaim with Vandamme, — " The 
Napoleon we knew in Italy no longer lives." 

Mr. Houssaye himself states that late in the morning 
of June 17 the Emperor did not know what had taken 
place at Quatre-Bras the day before ; did not know 
the true situation there ; did not know that by swiftly 
moving to the aid of Ney he would envelop Wellington 
with overwhelming numbers and crush him ! Even the 
Napoleon of 1814 would have missed no such chance as 
that. When the facts at length became known to him 
he realized what he had lost, dashed on with the van- 
guard to Quatre-Bras, and led the headlong pursuit of 
the English rear-guard — but it was too late. Wellington 
was well on his way to Mont St. Jean, and Lord Uxbridge 
was desperately hurrying the last of the British cavalry 



xLviii WATERLOO 655 

out of the danger, with his " Gallop ! for God's sake 
gallop, or you will be captured ! " 

Furthermore, Mr. Houssaye relates an incident which 
corroborates Carnot, Pasquier, and others who say that 
the Emperor was no longer able to endure prolonged 
labor : — 

"It was now (June 14) a little past noon. The Em- 
peror, amid the cheers of the inhabitants, passed through 
Charleroi, and halted at the foot of the crumbling glacis, 
near the little public-house called La Belle- Vue. He got 
off his horse, sent for a chair, and sat down by the side 
of the road. The troops defiled past him, cheering him 
lustily as they marched, their shouts deadening the roll of 
the drums and the shrill calls of the bugles. The enthu- 
siasm of the troops bordered on frenzy ; they broke ranks 
to embrace the horse of their Emperor." 

And what of Napoleon amid this splendid ovation — an 
ovation spontaneous and thrilling like that of the eve of 
Austerlitz ? 

He sat there dozing, the cheers of the troops, which 
deadened drums and bugles, being powerless to rouse him! 
It was only noon, he had only been in the saddle half a 
day — was this the man of Eckmiihl, of Friedland, of 
Wagram ? Was this the chief who used to ride and ride 
till horse after horse fell in its tracks ? 

Turn from this dozing chief, exhausted by half a 
day's work, and look at old Bliicher. At the age of 
seventy-three, he is full of pluck and dash and persist- 
ence. He hurries up his divisions to fight as soon as 
he knows that the French are moving. He is in the 
thick of the combat at Ligny. He heads charges like a 
common hussar. His horse is shot and he falls under the 



656 NAPOLEON chap, xlviii 

feet of rushing squadrons, is drawn out almost dead and 
borne off the field unconscious. Bruised and battered, 
the old man no sooner " comes to himself " than he is up 
again, beating down the cautious counsels of his chief-of- 
staff, and determined to go to the help of Wellington, — 
who had not come to Ms help, — although the chief-of- 
staff, Gneisenau, believing Wellington to be a "master 
knave," wished the Prussians to leave the English to take 
care of themselves at Waterloo, as the Prussians had been 
left to take care of themselves at Ligny. And on the ever 
memorable 18th, while Napoleon will be waiting, hour by 
hour, for the ground to dry so that he can move his artil- 
lery, old Bliicher will be coming as fast as he can hurry 
his troops through the mud, as fast as he can drag Ms 
artillery ; and the net result will be that, while miry 
ground stops the great Napoleon, it does not stop the 
impetuous and indomitable Bliicher. 



CHAPTER XLIX 

YX7HEN Napoleon finally awoke on the ITth, he spent 
the morning talking politics to Gerard and Grouchy. 
It was midday when he gave the latter some thirty-three 
thousand men, and sent him after the Prussians. The 
spirit, if not the letter, of his instructions was that he 
was to penetrate Bliicher's intentions : " whether he was 
separating from the English, or meant to unite, and fight 
again ! " Davoust would have known how to interpret 
such an order, and how to act upon it ; Grouchy, it seems, 
did not. For thirty years there was a dispute about the 
order itself, but at length it came to light ; and since its 
text has been known there has been little difference of 
opinion on the subject of Grouchy's conduct. Detached 
from the main army to take care of Bliicher, and to 
prevent the Prussians from coming to the aid of the 
English, he failed miserably to perform the task intrusted 
to him, and was of no more service to Napoleon in the 
movement which decided the campaign than D'Erlon had 
been at Ligny. 

Through torrents of rain, through the mud and slush of 
the cut-up roads, the French followed the English toward 
Brussels. 

On the crests of Mont St. Jean, with the forest of Soignes 
behind him, Wellington drew up his men for battle, rely- 
2 667 



658 NAPOLEON chap. 

ing upon Bliicher's promise to arrive in time to cooperate. 
There were eighteen thousand troops at Hal, which might 
have been called up to his support ; but Wellington, entirely 
misconceiving Napoleon's plans, had expected an attack 
upon his right, and this large force at Hal was left there 
in idleness to guard against an imaginary danger. By two 
o'clock in the morning of the 18th, Bliicher sent a courier 
to Wellington, promising the support without which the 
English army would have continued its retreat. 

When Napoleon's vanguard reached La Belle Alliance, 
and he saw that Wellington's army was in position on the 
opposite heights, he was happy. He had feared that the 
English would retire behind the forest of Soignes, unite 
with the Prussians, and thus be too strong for him. If he 
could but fight Wellington while Bliicher was away, he 
did not doubt his ability to " give the Englishman a 
lesson " : for while the French numbered 74,000, there 
were but 67,000 of the Anglo-Belgian army. 

The French army floundered through the mud of the 
soaked wheat-fields, the miry lowlands of the Dyle, and 
were late in the night of the 17th in reaching their posi- 
tions at La Belle Alliance. Indeed, some of the troops 
did not reach the battle-field till late next morning. The 
floods of rain had rendered it impossible for the provision 
trains to keep up. The exhausted French lay down with 
empty stomachs, to rest as well as they could on the wet 
ground, without shelter or fire, whilst the English army, 
comfortably fed, kept themselves warm by campfires. 

At dawn the rain ceased. Napoleon again reconnoitred, 
the ground being so soft that in places he " mired up," 
requiring help to lift his feet out of his tracks. Uncon- 
scious that even then old Bliicher was wading through the 



XLix WATERLOO 659 

bogs, across country, to get from Wavre to the English 
left at St. Lambert, Napoleon allowed hour after hour to 
slip by, stealing from him every chance of victory. The 
natural line of Prussian retreat was on Namur: he did 
not know that while Bliicher lay unconscious, on the 16th, 
Gneisenau, chief of staff, had directed the retreat on 
Wavre. Therefore, Napoleon took his breakfast leisurely, 
chatting cheerfully with his general officers ; and when he 
rode along the lines, saw all the splendor of his magnifi- 
cent array, heard the bugles and the bands, and the sweeter 
music of seventy thousand voices shouting " Live the Em- 
peror ! " the great captain's face glowed with pride and 
joy. To him such a spectacle, such a greeting, was the 
nectar of the gods; he drank it now for the very last 
time. 

It was eight o'clock when he made his plan of battle, 
nine when he issued orders, at ten he lay down and slept 
an hour. 

Napoleon mounted his horse at eleven, and rode along 
the Brussels highroad to the farmhouse of La Belle Alli- 
ance ; then he returned to the height of Rossomme. Be- 
tween the crest upon which he sat his white Arabian mare, 
" Desir^e," and that upon which Wellington awaited his 
attack, stretched the slopes of the ridges and the grain- 
covered valley between, about a mile in width. The Em- 
peror was as calm and as confident as he had ever been in 
his life. Sitting his horse on the heights where all his army 
could see him, see the old gray overcoat and little cocked 
hat, see the square, pale face and the squat, sturdy fig- 
ure, he swept every part of the field and of the horizon 
with his glass, and then gave the word. It was near noon 
on this fateful Sabbath day when the signal guns were 



660 NAPOLEON chap. 

heard; and the Prussians of Billow's corps were already 
approaching St. Lambert. The battle commenced with an 
attack on the chateau of Hougomont, a stone building on 
the British right, protected by walls and moat and hedge. 
The French corps of Reille, in the three divisions of Foy, 
Bachelu, and Jerome Bonaparte, threw itself furiously 
against this fortress; and desperate fighting, attack, and 
defence made the place literally run with blood — but the 
English, though driven from the woods, held the chateau. 

The attack on Hougomont was a feint which the rash 
Jerome carried too far. The real attack was to be on the 
English centre, and to prepare for this the Emperor formed 
a battery of eighty guns. It was about one o'clock when 
Ney, who was to lead the charge, sent word that all was 
ready. 

Before giving the signal, Napoleon swept the horizon 
with his glass, long and carefully. Away to the northeast 
he saw something which fixed his attention : it might be a 
clump of trees ; it might be a column of soldiers. Staff 
officers followed the Emperor's gaze, levelled their glasses, 
gave various opinions. " Trees," said some ; " Troops," 
said others. If troops, what troops — Bliicher's or 
Grouchy's? Such an awful doubt demanded instant 
action. Napoleon called for General Domon and ordered 
him to take a division of light cavalry and ride to St. 
Lambert ; if the troops were Prussians, he must stop them. 

Dumas describes the movement of the light cavalry: 
" Three thousand horsemen moved to the right, four 
abreast, unrolled themselves like an immense ribbon, wind- 
ing a moment in the lines of the army, then breaking loose 
through our extreme right, rode rapidly and re-formed like 
a parade nearly three thousand toises from its extremity." 



XLix WATERLOO 661 

Soon the Emperor's fearful doubt became a terrible cer- 
tainty. Not trees, but troops, stood over there in the 
distance ; and the troops were Prussians ! 

Where was Grouchy ? 

A Prussian prisoner taken in the territory where no 
Prussians should have been, was brought to the Emperor, 
and at his replies to the questions asked him, the imperial 
staff was panic-stricken ; and Napoleon himself filled with 
a storm of impotent rage. No French troops had been 
seen where Grouchy should have been, and the Prussian 
host was crowding toward the field of battle ! 

From this time onward the doomed Emperor was fight- 
ing two battles : Wellington at Mont St. Jean, and the 
Prussians at Plancenoit. About seven thousand of the 
best troops were sent to hold the Prussians off, while 
the attack on Wellington was being renewed. This was 
toward three o'clock in the afternoon. 

With two battles on his hands. Napoleon in his despair 
sent another messenger to Grouchy. Bitterly remarking 
upon the conduct of his lieutenant, who had been "amus- 
ing himself at Gembloux," the Emperor exclaimed that if 
Grouchy but repaired his " horrible fault," and marched 
promptly, all would yet be well ; for, be it remembered, 
Grouchy was only ten or twelve miles to the right. 

Suffering from local ailment which made the saddle 
painful to him, the Emperor dismounted and seated him- 
self at a small table upon which his maps were spread. 
Sometimes he got up and paced back and forth with his 
hands crossed behind him. Sometimes he folded his arms 
on the table and there rested his head, — in pain or slum- 
ber. The management of the actual fighting which was 
going on all this while, was left almost entirely to Ney 



«62 NAPOLEON chap. 

and D'Erlon, but especially to Ney, whose rashness at 
Waterloo was as ruinous to the French as his caution had 
been at Quatre-Bras. 

Wellington, on the contrary, was as anxious a man as 
ever bravely faced a foe. He had not believed himself 
equal to the combat with Napoleon, man to man, and had 
only resolved to give battle after having been assured of 
Bliicher's aid. Whether the Prussians could arrive in 
time, was Wellington's great doubt. He felt that his only 
salvation lay just there ; and it was not until Billow's 
corps, at 4.30 p.m., had drawn away from Napoleon at least 
sixteen thousand of his best troops, that Wellington, feel- 
ing the French onset in his front relax, exclaimed : " By 
God! I believe we will whip them yet." Stronger evi- 
dence than that of the Prussian military expert. Muffling, 
is this Wellington exclamation, that he was a lost man 
had not " Old Bliicher " come. 

Against Wellington's left the corps of D'Erlon was 
hurled ; and at Papelotte and La Haye Sainte the struggle 
was as bloody, as desperate, as full of quick turns of for- 
tune, ebb and flow, success mingled with failure, as any 
known to history. The English line was terribly shaken, 
the losses frightful, but the French finally were driven back. 

The Emperor had intended to support Reille with Lo- 
bau's corps ; that corps had been sent from the field to 
meet the Prussians. 

Ney asked for a cavalry division to support the renewed 
attack he was about to make with D'Erlon's corps. Owing 
to some mistake, Ney got not only the cavalry division 
which he had asked for, but the entire cavalry reserve, 
so that he took with him some twelve thousand horse. 

This mighty mass was not launched at the weakened 



XLix WATERLOO 663 

English left, but at the centre. How the French host 
rode down into the valley, up the hill, and charged upon 
the English guns and the English squares, repeating the 
assault time and time again, all readers know. Made with 
a heroism which the world can but admire, these charges 
were repulsed with a courage which nothing could shake. 
The English squares stood unbroken against French horse, 
as the French themselves had stood against the Mame- 
lukes. Twice, thrice, the British cannoneers were driven 
from their guns ; twice the British artillery was in the 
hands of the French. Why were not the guns spiked ? 
Why at least, were not the sponges broken, or the caissons 
destroyed? In the melee no one gave the order. So 
the cannon and its ammunition and its rammer was left 
there ready for the British gunner, when the retreat of the 
French cavalry made it possible for him to return to his 
battery. The attack had been premature. The Emperor 
himself exclaimed, " This is an hour too soon, but as it has 
been done I must support it. The day may be lost by this 
mistake." 

It is true that Wellington's army was fearfully battered ; 
that, between his rear and Brussels, the road was full of 
panic-stricken fugitives, not all of whom were Belgians or 
Hanoverians. It is true that English officers had almost 
despaired, and that frantic riders flew to Biilow imploring 
him to save the British army. It is true that there was a 
gap in the English line into which Ney frantically sought 
to throw infantry, and so win the day. But Napoleon had 
already been forced to send ten thousand other veteran 
troops to hold in check the thirty thousand Prussians. 
When, therefore, Ney's messenger came, asking for infan- 
try, the Emperor petulantly answered, " Infantry ! Where 



664 NAPOLEON chap. 

does he expect me to get them? Can I make them?" 
There are those who say that had he thrown in the few re- 
serve battalions of the Guard, the day might have been won. 

So the great opportunity passed. La Haye Sainte was 
taken; but the English line was mended by reenforce- 
ments where it had been broken, and the Prussians, 
under Ziethen, joined Wellington on his left. It was now 
seven o'clock. The French were about to be taken in the 
flank by the entire Prussian army. Napoleon might have 
drawn off in good order, but the junction of Bliicher and 
Wellington would spoil all his plans. There was a chance 
yet for him to crush the English by a final charge into 
which every available man should be thrown. If it suc- 
ceeded, all was won ; if it failed, all was lost. It was the 
superb risk of the daring gambler: everything upon a 
single cast. 

The orders flew, lines were formed, the great captain 
rode among his men, and spoke to them. The sound of 
their shouts of " Live the Emperor ! " reached the English 
lines where the charge was expected, a deserter from the 
French ranks having brought warning. Ney was put at 
the head of the columns, and the march began. Through 
the mud of the valley, and up the slippery hill they went, 
under the murderous fire of all the English guns. Through 
the dense ranks, too closely crowded in that small space, 
great lines were cut by cannon balls, and so hot was 
the musket fire that they could not deploy. Ziethen's 
Prussians were now in the fight, coming with full force 
on the right. Ney's men, taken front and flank, had yet 
advanced to within fifty yards of the English line; but 
unable to open their ranks and charge, under such a 
terrific fire, they fell into confusion. The Emperor was 



XLix WATERLOO 665 

watching them through his glass. " They are all mixed 
up; for the present, all is lost." At the moment when 
Napoleon was saying this, Wellington was ordering the 
advance of his whole line ; the Prussian guns were thun- 
dering on the French flank ; and over the lost field ran the 
cry : " The Guard recoils ! We are betrayed ! Save him- 
self who can ! " 

In vain Ney struggled to hold the rout; in vain the 
Emperor hoarsely shouted to his men to rally: it was 
dark ; confusion was everywhere ; and the French army, 
a mighty wreck, was swept from its moorings. English 
cavalry made furious charges, crying " No quarter ! " and 
Napoleon had no cavalry reserves to meet the shock. 

Note. — In reference to the disputed incident of the British de- 
mand for the surrender of the Old Guard, and Cambronne's reply, the 
truth seems to be, that such a demand was made, and that Cambronne 
did reply, defiantly, though nastily ; and that his language shot out 
in the disgust and exasperation of the moment, can more accurately 
be rendered into the English phrase, " Go to hell ! " than in the classic 
terms, " The Guard dies : it does not surrender ! " 

Immediately after his scornful response, the heroic Cambronne 
was shot full in the face, and was left for dead on the field. 

Readers of Thackeray wiU remember how he jeers and laughs at 
the defiance of the Old Guard ; just as they will remember how he 
jeers and mocks at the second funeral of Napoleon, — so sure is the 
professional fun-maker to overreach himself, now and then. 

The truth is, that the French troops were badly handled in the 
actual fighting at Waterloo ; and that Napoleon stated no more 
than the fact when he charged Ney with having acted like a mad- 
man. 

The troops, cavalry, and infantry were massed in such dense for- 
mation, on such contracted area, that they were in each other's way, 
had no fair chance to do what they should have done, and were sacri- 
ficed horribly to the British artillery. At the very moment when Ney 
was clamoring for reenforcements, he had forgotten a part of his own 
troops, — who were not engaged, who could have been used, and who 
might have decided the day in his favor. 



666 NAPOLEON chap. 

The mismanagement of the troops still further demoralized them, 
as it tended to confirm their suspicions that they were being betrayed. 

It has been claimed that Napoleon intentionally deceived his own 
troops, toward the last, by sending word along the line that Grouchy 
had come. This is by no means certain. The Emperor could hear 
the guns of Grouchy, who was engaged at Wavre, just as Grouchy 
had heard, during the afternoon, the guns at Waterloo. Napoleon 
doubtless believed that Grouchy was at last going to show up on his 
extreme right. 

The old road of Ohain seems not to have wrecked the French 
cavalry in the tragic manner Victor Hugo alleges. Romance, tradi- 
tion, and patriotic painting represents the Emperor's squadrons as 
being engulfed in the ravine made by the road where it passed 
through the high ground — over which ground the cavalry is alleged 
to have charged, in ignorance that the ravine, or " hollow way," was 
there. Mr. Houssaye who has studied the matter thoroughly says 
that there is no historic foundation for the story. 

The remnants of the Old Guard formed squares, and for 
a while held off their pursuers; but the barrier was too 
frail, and it soon melted away. Napoleon, dazed and 
despairing, spurred his horse toward the English guns, but 
Soult, according to Gourgaud, caught the bridle reins, and 
the Emperor was forced off the field, protected by the last 
of the Old Guard squares. With a few horsemen he rode 
away, so crushed, so tired, that Bertrand and Monthyon 
had to hold him upright in the saddle. Several times on 
the retreat he attempted vainly to rally the fugitives : the 
panic was too complete. 

The English rested at La Belle Alliance ; and Welling- 
ton, after meeting and hugging Bliicher, rode to Waterloo 
to write his despatches. A Rothschild agent had already 
gone at speed to the coast, to reach England ahead of the 
news, and make additional millions for that enterprising 
house. 

The Prussians pressed the pursuit with relentless vigor ; 



WATERLOO 667 



and the summer moon lit as wild a man-hunt as this blood- 
soaked planet ever knew. 



What should Napoleon do, — stay, and attempt to rally 
the army, or hasten to Paris to check intriguers and or- 
ganize resistance to the invaders ? He did not know what 
had become of Grouchy, did not know how much of his 
own army was left. He dreaded the betrayal and the 
deposition of 1814, not fully realizing the deeper pits of 
1815. As a matter of fact, Grouchy's army was intact. 
He had led it in most leisurely fashion to Wavre, and 
it had listened all day to the guns of Waterloo. Gerard, 
Vandamme, Exelmans, felt that the Emperor was in the 
midst of a great battle, and with the instinct of soldiers 
urged that they should " March to the guns ! " They 
pleaded with Grouchy to go, Gerard insisting with such 
temper that Grouchy's precious self-love was pricked. 
In vain was all remonstrance ; Grouchy would not move. 
He went to Wavre, fought the rearguard which Bliicher 
had left there to detain him, made himself as utterly 
useless to his chief as though he had not existed, aiid 
then, after Waterloo, fell back, in admirable order, to 
Namur. Pluming himself upon the safety of his corps, 
the loss of the Empire did not ruffle his self-complacent 
satisfaction. 

There was chaos in Paris when it was known that the 
army was no more, and that the Emperor was at the Elysee. 
palace. The tongue of faction fiercely wagged, and con- 
spiracy stalked unmasked wherever it would. Lafayette 
babbled of constitutions and guarantees for liberty, when 
France needed every strong arm and every gun. Fouch^, 



668 NAPOLEON chap. 

duping both imperialists and republicans, plotted for the 
Bourbons, and opened communications with Wellington. 
Lucien Bonaparte gave wings to his conceit, and, dreamed 
of a new government in which he should be chief and 
Napoleon lieutenant! 

Carnot alone kept his head and saw clearly what was 
needed. " Give Napoleon all he wants, make him tempo- 
rary dictator, hold up the man's hands, and let him save 
the country ! " 

Grand old republican ! History puts upon his mem- 
ory, as a wreath. Napoleon's own sad words, uttered in 
these days of trial, " Carnot, I have known you too 
late ! " 

Fouche sowed distrust in the chambers, making them 
believe that Napoleon meant to dissolve them. This the 
Emperor was advised to do ; and should, perhaps, have 
done. When they refused to vote him supplies, they ceased 
to be of service ; became, instead, a source of weakness 
and danger. Why not cut down such a tree ? Why tol- 
erate politicians who at such a moment prated of constitu- 
tional limitations ? 

Napoleon ordered his carriage to go to the chambers ; 
but after the horses had idly pawed the ground for hours, 
he changed his mind. He would not go. 

Ney returned in a fury from the army. Napoleon's bul- 
letins of the battle had censured him. The marshal 
angrily replied in the Moniteur, and he now from his place 
in the House of Peers struck back at his late master. 
When Labedoyere, Davoust, and others told the cham- 
bers that Grouchy's army was intact, and that thirty or 
forty thousand of Napoleon's own troops had rallied, — all 
of which was true, — Ney hotly denied it. Passionate 



XLix WATERLOO 669 

and positive, he declared that the army no longer ex- 
isted ; that all talk of defence was idle ; that terms must 
be made with the enemy. Unfortunate man, whom Bour- 
bon hatred had marked for a traitor's death! His one 
chance for life was to continue the fight for the Em- 
peror; his headstrong folly and falsehood ruined both 
Napoleon and himself. 

Nothing would satisfy the Lafayette party but Napo- 
leon's abdication. The ground must be cleared for a 
republic or a limited monarchy. Freed of Napoleon, La- 
fayette believed that France could make peace with the 
Allies, and would be suffered to choose her own ruler and 
form of government. Fouche slyly encouraged this dream 
of the man whom Napoleon justly termed "a political 
ninny." No one knew better than Fouche that Napoleon's 
vacant throne would be filled by the king whom Napoleon - 
had driven from it. 

The plots that were at work became known throughout 
Paris, and created an immense sensation. The masses of 
the people wanted no Bourbons, no Lafayette experi- 
ments. In the face of such national danger, they wanted 
Napoleon. Great crowds began to collect, and the streets 
rang with cries of " Live the Emperor ! " The multitude 
thronged the avenues to the Elysee palace, and clamored 
for Napoleon to assert himself. 

But at last the great man's energy was dead. He cared 
no longer for anything. He was sick in mind and body, 
disgusted, worn out, utterly discouraged. The enemies 
of France he could fight — yes, a world full of them ! — 
but France itself he would not fight. He would head no 
faction ; would wage no civil war for his crown. It had 
come to that, and his heart failed him. Let the factions 



670 NAPOLEON chap. 

rage, let his French enemies combine : he would not stoop 
to such a combat. At last he was vanquished : this greater 
Percy's spur was cold. 

Behind the armies of Bliicher and Wellington blazed 
the campfires of more than five hundred thousand soldiers 
marching under their kings upon France : how could any- 
human being combat half of France and the whole of 
Europe besides? The great head sank upon his breast, 
and the beaten Emperor muttered, " Let them do as they 
will." 

He gave in his abdication in favor of his son, when 
abdication was demanded. He submitted when his son 
was set aside. He made no effort to prevent the formation 
of Fouch^'s provisional government. He warned the err- 
ing statesmen that they were playing Fouch^'s game, and 
were making a huge mistake ; but he lifted no hand to check 
the movement. Soldiers as well as citizens clamored for 
him to lead them ; he answered their shouts with lifted 
hat and bowed head, but in no other way. When Fouch^, 
fearing him, ordered him away, he went. 

Stopping at Malmaison, it was the same. He took no 
interest in anything, was apathetic, slept much, talked at 
random, and strolled idly about the grounds. Soldiers, 
passing in the road, cheered him with as much enthusiasm 
as ever, but he merely said, " It would have been better 
had they stood and fought at Waterloo." 

There was one flash of his old spirit. The armies of 
Wellington and Bliicher, marching upon Paris, had become 
widely separated. He saw that they could be beaten in 
detail, and he offered his services as a general to the 
Fouch^ government to drive back the invaders. The offer 
was refused. 



xLix WATERLOO 671 

The army which had been operating in La Vendue 
clamored for him to put himself at its head ; the army of 
the Loire sent envoys; citizens thronged about him and 
besought him to rouse himself and fight. " No. It would 
only be civil war. I will not shed the blood of the French 
in a purely personal cause." 

He formed no plans. He lingered at Malmaison when 
he could have escaped. Finally he went to the coast, and 
again he wasted time in uncertainty when he might have 
safely taken ship to America. ^ 

When almost every other chance was gone, he trusted, 
himself to Captain Maitland of the British navy, whom 
Napoleon had understood to promise asylum for him in 
England. 

The armies of Wellington and Bliicher continued their 
advance. There was some fighting before Paris ; then 
came capitulation ; and then came the Bourbons, skulking 
back to the throne in the rear of the enemies of France. 
Lafayette and the provisional government were quietly 
swept into the outer darkness. In after years he lamented 
his error of 1815, and in 1830 he did what he could to 
square accounts with his friends, the elder Bourbons. 

1 Talma was present at the last parting, at Malmaison, between the 
Emperor and his mother, and he said it was one of the most tragic scenes 
he ever witnessed. When the last moment arrived, the Empress- mother, 
prostrated with grief, and with tears streaming from her eyes, could only- 
utter in a tremulous voice, "Adieu, my son! Adieu." And Napoleoni 
was so affected that he caught hold of both her hands and cried, "Adieu, 
my mother 1" and burst into tears as he left her. — (Gronow's Anecdotes.) 



CHAPTER L 

T)r"HATEVER legal right Great Britain had to treat 
the French Emperor as prisoner of war, must neces- 
sarily have grown out of the manner in which she got 
possession of his person. In regard to this, the actual 
facts are that Lord Castlereagh in 1814 had suggested 
that he come to England, where he would be well re- 
ceived; and Captain Maitland of the Bellerophon, while 
disclaiming any authority to bind his government, had 
certainly not said anything which would warn the Empe- 
ror not to expect such treatment as Castlereagh, an Eng- 
lish minister, had seemed to offer in 1814. Upon the con- 
trary, Napoleon was received on board Captain Maitland's 
ship with formal honors ; and when Napoleon said, " I 
come to place myself under the protection of the British 
laws," Captain Maitland gave him no hint that those laws 
had no protection for him. If Great Britain did not 
intend to accept him in the spirit in which he offered 
himself, should she have received him without giving 
him notice that he was acting under a delusion? Was 
it honorable, was it right? If she considered him a cap- 
tive, why not tell him so? Why receive him on board 
with formal demonstrations of honor ; why invite him to 
banquets where British admirals treated him as a sover- 
eign ? Why wait till the fleet was on the English coast 

672 



chap: l ST. HELENA 673 

before reading to him the cold lines which consigned him 
to St. Helena? 

The entire episode reeks with dishonor. It will not do 
to say that he was certain to have been captured anyhow ; 
for that statement cannot be true. There were three 
vessels offered him at Rochefort, in either of which he 
might have escaped to America ; or he could have placed 
himself at the head of some of the French troops, near 
by, and have recommenced the war. With Napoleon's 
standard once more up, his sword in his hand, who can 
doubt that he could have wrung from his enemies some 
settlement better than hopeless captivity upon a barren 
rock? At all events, it seems a shocking thing to open 
one's door to a vanquished foe, after he has knocked 
thereon with the plea of a guest; and then, after having 
let him enter as a guest, to bar the door upon him as a 
prisoner. No amount of argument can hide the shame of 
such a transaction. 

When Napoleon came on board Captain Maitland's ship, 
there is no doubt whatever that he was sincere in his be- 
lief that he would be permitted to live in England as a 
private citizen. Nor is there any doubt that Maitland 
thought so to*. When Admiral Hotham, of the British 
man of war, Superb^ visited the Bellerophon, Maitland's 
ship, on the evening of Napoleon's going on board, he 
asked permission to see, not a prisoner, but an Emperor. 
And the breakfast he gave in Napoleon's honor next 
morning on the Superb was given, not to a captive, but 
to a sovereign. Not only the admiral, but all the officers 
of the squadron, paid to the distinguished visitor every 
honor ; and he was invited to continue his journey in the 
more commodious vessel, the Superb. He declined, out 

2x 



674 NAPOLEON char 

of regard for Haitian d's feelings ; and it was Napoleon's 
preference, and not Hotham's, which prevailed. 

These things being considered, who can doubt that 
Napoleon and the naval squadron which had possession 
of him were honestly acting in the belief that he was on 
his way to England as a guest, as a great man in misfor- 
tune, who was seeking asylum in the magnanimity of a 
great people? 

The time had been when the word "chivalry" counted 
for something in Great Britain, though, to be sure, its 
influence had been fitful. A king like Edward III. and 
a prince like Edward's son, who were knights, might ex- 
haust generosity in their dealings with a captive king ol 
France, who was likewise a knight ; but the severed limbs 
and gory head of Scottish Wallace were quite enough to 
have caused Napoleon to doubt whether John of France 
received the benefit of a rule or of an exception. 

Between the Black Prince, to whom John trusted, and 
the Prince Regent, to whom Napoleon wrote his manly 
and touching appeal, the difference in character was con- 
siderably wider than the chasm of the years which sepa- 
rated them. To this Prince Regent, known to history as 
King George IV., the fallen Emperor of the French wrote : 
" My political career is ended, and I come to sit down at 
the fireside of the British people. I place myself under 
the protection of their laws, and I claim this protection from 
your Royal Highness as the most powerful, most constant, 
most generous of my foes ! " 

Surely a manly appeal ! Surely a noble confidence ! 
The soldier who had wielded what an Englishman has 
recently called " the most splendid of human swords," 
turned to the chief of his foes and said, "The battle has 



I, ST. HELENA 675 

gone against me ; my public life is at an end ; I offer you 
my sword; let me sit down under your protection and 
spend the evening of my life in peace ! " 

He was a broken man; he had refused to make any 
further strife in France when thousands of the people 
implored him, to the, moment of his departure, to stay 
and fight again. " No. I am tired out — tired of myself 
and of the world." He was ill, could no longer ride horse- 
back in comfort, could no longer concentrate his mind for 
prolonged effort. And he who had been so restless now 
lay abed, or lolled with a novel in his hand, and gossiped 
or dozed by the hour. 

Never in Napoleon's career had the prayer of a van- 
quished foe fallen upon ears which heard not. The battle 
ended ; he was ready for peace. He bore no malice, took 
no revenge. Splendid acts of generosity lit his progress 
from first to last. During the Hundred Days when he 
was so much occupied and in such straits for money, he 
had sought out the Dowager-Duchess of Orleans, and re- 
newed her large pension; she had delivered him a prize 
when he was a schoolboy. In the dreadful strain of the 
hours between Ligny and Waterloo, he had remarked 
the critical condition of a captive English officer, Colonel 
Elphinstone, and had sent his own surgeon to give imme- 
diate attention to the wounded man, thus saving his life. 
To the Belgian peasants he had threatened the terrors of 
hell if they neglected to succor the Prussian wounded. 

It is folly to say that noble deeds like these spring from 
hearts that are base. Natural kindness, inborn nobility, 
must be the source from which such conduct flows. Gen- 
erous himself to the vanquished, magnanimous to those 
"who threw themselves upon his generosity, it is easy to 



676 NAPOLEON chap. 

understand how it was that Napoleon trusted confidently 
to the liberality of Great Britain. Just as the pallid face 
of the dead is the flag of truce which hushes the angry 
voice of feud, just as the lowered point of lance or sword 
threw around the weaker man the invisible armor which 
no gallant knight would ever pierce, so this greatest cap- 
tain of modern times believed that he had only to say to 
England : " Enough I I am beaten ! I throw myself on 
your clemency ! " in order to win the same immunity from 
insult, harsh treatment, and continued warfare. 

So, when British officials at length came on board the 
ship and read to him the decision of the English ministry, 
that he was to be taken to St. Helena as prisoner of war; 
when British officials searched his trunks, took charge of 
his cash, and demanded his sword, his amazement, grief, 
horror, and indignation were profound. He had made for 
himself a Fool's Paradise ; he had seen himself living in 
England, at one of her quiet, lovely homes; had sur- 
rounded himself with books and friends, and was to spend 
the remainder of life as a private gentleman whose passion 
was literature. When the horrible reality came upon him, 
he seemed desperate, and contemplated suicide. 

Lord Liverpool, English Prime Minister, had, in official, 
despatches, expressed the opinion that the very best way 
to deal with Napoleon was to treat him as a rebel and have 
him hanged or shot. Lord Wellington's opinion ran along 
on parallel lines to this, he being one of those warriors to 
whom generosity was a myth. In this spirit the British 
government conveyed Napoleon to St. Helena ; in this spirit 
he was treated as long as he lived ; and in this spirit his 
dead body was pursued to the grave. In the same spirit 
men who never met him personally, and who studied him 



I. ST. HELENA 677 

from the point of view of Toryism only, have blackened 
his memory from that day to this, seeing his faults, 
and nothing but his faults ; trumpeting his sins, and 
nothing but his sins, just as though Napoleon Bonaparte 
were not a son of Adam, like any other, and wonderfully 
made out of the mixed elements of good and bad. 

Even yet, royalism, absolutism, fetichism in Church and 
State, have a horror of Napoleon Bonaparte, so rudely 
did he smash their idols, so truly did he clear the way for 
modern liberalism. One can hardly escape the conclusion 
that even yet books of a certain type, written against 
Napoleon, are little more than briefs for the defendants 
in the case which the modern world makes against the 
kings, the nobles, and the priests for the manner in which 
they crushed democracy for a time on the false plea of 
crushing Napoleon. 

Passing from the custody of Captain Maitland to that of 
Sir George Cockburn, Napoleon was made to feel the 
change of status as well as the change of ship. Sir George 
was a typical commander of a battle-ship, — a small mon- 
arch, a despot on a limited scale. His own Diary exhib- 
its him as no other writing could. It shows him to have 
felt that he must make " Bonaparte " know his real posi- 
tion ; make " Bonaparte " come down from his lofty perch 
and look up to the eminence of Sir George. If "Bona- 
parte " presumed to put on airs around Sir George, Sir 
George would soon teach him better. If " Bonaparte " 
showed the slightest inclination to act the Emperor, Sir 
George would promptly convince him that "I cannot 
allow it." If " Bonaparte " grew tired of sitting at the 
dinner table an hour and a half, having never been accus- 
tomed to spend more than twenty minutes in that manner, 



678 NAPOLEON chap. 

Sir George would resent his leaving the table while the 
others guzzled wine; and would, as Napoleon left the 
room, make sneering remarks to " Bonaparte's " friends 
about " Bonaparte's " manners. 

One of the things of which Sir George said " I cannot 
allow it," was the proposed gift of a handsome gratuity 
from " Bonaparte " to the sailors of the ship. Sir George 
evidently feared that such a gift, adding to " Bonaparte's " 
already great popularity with the crew, might bear fruit 
unpleasant to the taste of Sir George. 

Indeed, the manner in which all those who came in 
contact with Napoleon found their prejudice melt away, 
is very remarkable. Fouche had selected General Becker 
as Napoleon's custodian in France for the reason that 
Becker bore the Emperor a grudge ; yet by the time 
Napoleon went on board Maitland's ship, Becker had 
become an ardent friend, and the parting between them 
left Becker in tears. 

Captain Maitland liked him. Lord Keith liked him, the 
crews of the English ships liked him. Even Sir George 
Cockburn ceased to hate him. "Damn the fellow!" ex- 
claimed Lord Keith ; " I believe that if he and the Prince 
Regent should meet, the two would be the best of friends 
in half an hour." 

One incident of the voyage to St. Helena could not be 
told in words more vivid than those of Lord Rosebery : — 

" Once only in that voyage did his apathy forsake him. 
At dawn one morning when the ship was making Ushant, 
the watch, to their unspeakable surprise, saw the Emperor 
issue from his cabin and make his way, with some diffi- 
culty, to the poop. Arrived there, he asked the officer on 
duty if the coast were indeed Ushant, and then taking a 



I. ST. HELENA 679 

telescope, be gazed fixedly at the land. From seven till 
near noon he thus remained motionless. Neither the 
officers of the ship nor his staff as they watched him, 
durst disturb that agony. At last, as the outlines faded 
from his sight, he turned his ghastly face, concealing it as 
best he could, and clutched at the arm of Bertrand, who 
supported him back to his cabin. It was his last sight of 
France." 

Landed at St. Helena, he was given shabby quarters in 
a renovated, repaired, and amplified cow-house. The walls 
of it were thin, the rooms small ; the rain and the wind 
pierced it, the heat made an oven of it, the rats infested 
it ; no shade trees cast grateful shade about it ; no fruits 
or flowers relieved its dismal repulsiveness. 

To make sure that Napoleon should not escape from the 
isolated, precipitous rock of St. Helena, a considerable fleet 
of cruisers girdled the island, and nearly three thousand 
troops watched the prisoner. The eye could not range in 
any direction without resting upon a sentinel. During 
the daytime the Emperor had continual reminders of his 
fallen condition; and when night came on the line of 
sentries closed in, and no one could pass. 

The prisoner and his friends were allowed to have books 
to read ; and if Sir Hudson Lowe in browsing among the 
European newspapers and magazines happened upon some 
peculiarly bitter weed of abuse of Napoleon, that par- 
ticular paper or magazine was sure to be sent up to 
Longwood, Napoleon's residence. If books, papers, or 
magazines arrived in which the captive was tenderly 
handled, such articles became contraband, upon one plea 
or another, and rarely reached the lonely man they would 
have cheered. The prisoner and his companions were 



680 NAPOLEON chap. 

given enough to eat, generally, and a sufficiency of fuel 
and water. It was only occasionally that Napoleon had to 
feed the fire in his damp room by breaking up his furni- 
ture ; nor was it often that the quality of the food was such 
that appetites were lost because of grave suspicions as to 
the manner in which the cow or sheep which supplied the 
beef or mutton had come to its death. 

Excepting the bare necessities of life, the prisoner was 
given nothing to make captivity reasonably comfortable. 
Ditches and trenches were dug all about him, guns 
planted, soldiers posted, and absurdly minute, vexatious 
regulations made. If Napoleon rode, a British soldier 
must attend him ; if he stayed in the house, a British soldier 
must have sight of him every day. No letter could come 
or go without having been opened and read by his jailer, 
Sir Hudson Lowe. Books sent him, pictures, and every- 
thing else had to come through the same channel. If any 
article sent him were addressed to him as Emperor, it was 
impounded relentlessly. A Mr. Barber who had come to 
live in the island had brought with him two portraits of 
Napoleon's son, intending, as a kindness which would cer- 
tainly be appreciated, to present them to the bereaved 
father. Sir Hudson Lowe forbade the gift, and the 
Emperor never laid eyes upon the treasures. It was only 
through Eugene that Napoleon finally received a portrait 
of his son : it came packed in a box of books. A marble 
bust of the King of Rome came also, and this was long 
held by Lowe, who threatened to break it in pieces. A 
letter from Napoleon's mother, in which she offered to 
share his lot though blind and bending with age, was torn 
open and read by the governor before its delivery. The 
captive refused to consent that either his mother or his 



I. ST. HELENA 681 

sister Pauline should come : he was unwilling to see them 
subjected to the insolence of his jailers. 

The question of title gave more trouble at St. Helena 
than almost any other. It was vexatious, it was met 
at every turn, and it could never be settled. It angered 
Napoleon excessively when Sir Hudson Lowe persistently 
continued to shut off from him all letters, books, or 
other articles which came addressed to "The Emperor." 
Great Britain was resolved that he should not be known 
by the title he had worn so long, which a vote of the 
French people had confirmed, which the Pope had conse- 
crated so far as a pope can consecrate, which every king 
on the Continent had recognized, and which England her 
self had recognized at the Congress of Chatillon, if not 
under the ministry of Charles Fox. " General Bonaparte" 
was the highest title that Great Britain could now allow ; 
and her prisoner resisted her as stubbornly on this point as 
General George Washington resisted her right to send him 
letters addressed " Mr. George "Washington." 

A small thing in itself, the refusal of his title became 
important to him because of the spirit which actuated 
those who refused it. They meant to degrade him in the 
eyes of the world, to wound his pride by an exertion of 
authority ; and he resented it as all self-respecting men 
must resent the smallest of affronts when inflicted with the 
meanest of motives. 

" Let us compromise," urged Napoleon ; " call me Gen- 
eral Duroc or Colonel Muiron." " No ! " said Great Bri- 
tain ; " we will call you General Bonaparte, for that hurts 
you." In simple words, such was England's attitude 
throughout his captivity to this lonely, broken, most 
wretched man. A book which an Englishman, Byron's 



682 NAPOLEON chap. 

friend Hobhouse, wrote on the Hundred Days, and which 
would have given the exile immense pleasure, was not 
delivered because in sending it the author had written on 
the fly-leaf " To the Emperor Napoleon." And when the 
prisoner died, and his friends wished to inscribe on his coffin- 
lid the word, " Napoleon," Great Britain, speaking through 
Sir Hudson Lowe, refused the privilege, — Napoleon was 
the imperial name; it could not be permitted. The 
white face of the dead man, the folded hands, the frozen 
sleep of Death, made no appeal to his captor which could 
soften this inexorable enmity. Hounding him to his very 
grave they demanded that "Bonaparte" be added to 
" Napoleon," to prove to all the world that England, un- 
generous to the living captive who had come to her for 
generosity, had been implacable even unto death, and after 
death. So it was that the coffin of this greatest of men 
went unmarked to the tomb. Save in anonymous burial 
there was no escape from the malignancy which had 
made his last years one long period of torture. 



Napoleon's household at St. Helena consisted of General 
Bertrand and wife and children, Count Montholon and 
wife. Las Casas and son. General Gourgaud, and Doctor 
O'Meara, the Irish surgeon of the English battleship Beller- 
ojphon, who had asked and been granted by his govern- 
ment permission to attach himself to the Emperor as his 
physician. Besides these, there was a staff of domestics, 
and, toward the end, a Corsican doctor Antommarchi and 
a couple of priests. 

Organizing his little establishment with the same love 
of system which he had shown throughout his career, 



V ST. HELENA 683 

Napoleon preserved at St. Helena the etiquette of the 
Tuileries. He had his great household officers, as at Elba ; 
his servants wore the imperial livery ; intercourse between 
himself and the friends who attended him was as cere- 
monious as it had ever been. Nobody was admitted to his 
presence save after audience asked and granted. In his 
shabby little room this fallen monarch imposed his will 
upon those about him to such an extent that none of his 
friends entered until summoned, or left until dismissed. 
Not till general conversation was in full current did any 
of his companions address him unless first spoken to by 
him. No matter how long he might feel inclined to talk, 
they stood throughout, never daring to sit unless he 
graciously invited them to do so. He would read to the 
company, and they were expected to listen attentively. A 
yawn was an offence, and was rebuked on the spot. A 
nod was an aggravation, and it would be broken into by 
such prompt admonitions as, " Madame Montholon, you 
sleep!" 

Those were dreary days at St. Helena, and the nights 
were drearier still. He ceased to ride, so hateful was the 
sight of his jailers. He tried to get some amusement out 
of planting trees, making a garden, and digging a fish pond. 
Sometimes he romped with the children ; often he played 
chess, and cards, and billiards. In the pathetic attempt to 
get the benefit of horseback exercise without having to 
ride out in custody of an English officer, he rigged up a 
wooden contrivance in the house and worked away on this 
make-believe horse for a while. 

But books and composition were his great resources. 
He read much, dictated a great deal ; and when these tired 
him, he called in his companions and tried conversation. 



684 NAPOLEON chap. 

As was natural, his talk touched every epoch of his 
past, — his home and family in Corsica, his childhood, his 
school days, his early struggles, his first triumphs, his 
campaigns and battles, his numberless plans and under- 
takings, his mistakes and failures. He spoke of himself, 
generally, in the third person, as of one long since dead ; 
and spoke of the events of his career as some one, seated 
upon a mountain top, might calmly describe the panorama 
below. 

In alluding to those who had served him, in any capacity, 
his was the tone of a chemist reporting the result of some 
analysis. 

He rarely showed much temper either way, for or 
against, but spoke with a curious indifference, as of 
remote historical characters. Even when stating his bad 
opinion of Fouch^, Talleyrand, Augereau, Emperor Francis, 
or Czar Alexander, he manifested no rancor. 

Without any trace of bitterness, he referred to the harm 
his brothers and sisters had done him ; of Marmont, Berthier, 
Murat, Ney, he spoke with as much absence of malice as was 
possible under the circumstances. He took to himself all 
the blame for his great errors, — his Russian campaign and 
the attempt on Spain. 

More inclined to be severe on those who had failed him 
during the Hundred Days, he put the burden where history 
must say it belongs, — on Bourmont, on Ney, on the false 
movement of D'Erlon's column, on Grouchy, and on Fouch^ 
and Lafayette. 

The anniversary of Waterloo was a yearly affliction. It 
was a day that oppressed him, a day which wrung from him 
anguished regrets. 

" Ah, if it were to be done over again ! " 



I. . ST. HELENA 685 

How did it happen ? why was it that his left failed him 
at Ligny, and his right at Waterloo ? Was there treachery, 
or merely misfortune ? 

Over this problem he would ponder, with a face which 
revealed deep emotion ; a feeling akin to that which had 
caused him to raise his hand and strike his forehead on the 
day when he heard the guns of Bliicher's army where he had 
expected to hear Grouchy 's. 

Wellington he frankly hated : partly because Wellinor- 
ton had commanded at Waterloo, and partly because 
Wellington had sent him to St. Helena. In his Will, the 
dying Emperor left an unworthy trace of this bitter 
feeling by devising a sum of money to a man wlio was 
charged with having attempted to assassinate the English 
duke. True, the Emperor states that the man had been 
acquitted, but the Will asserts that Cantillon had as much 
right to kill Wellington as the latter had " to send me to 
die on this rock." Here is vindictiveness and a depar- 
ture from good morals ; but if ever circumstances justified 
such an offence, it was in the case of Napoleon. 

But the time, hard as he tried to kill it, hung heavy on 
his hands. He would lie in bed till late in the day, spend 
hours in the bath, lounge in undress on the sofa. If he 
could by any means keep himself pleasantly occupied till 
midnight, he was overjoyed : " We have got through one 
more day ! " " When I wake at night, do you think my 
thoughts are pleasant, remembering what I have been, and 
what I am ? " " How long the nights are ! " was an excla- 
mation which reveals an ocean of misery. 

With more to grieve over than all of his companions 
put together, he made it a point to set an example of 
cheerfulness, of amiable comradeship, of intelligent con- 



686 NAPOLEON chap, l 

sideration for others. " We are a little group, a little 
family, condemned to pass dreary years of exile here on 
this bleak rock ; let us try make the time pass as agree- 
ably as possible." When there were jealousies and bick- 
erings between members of his little court, it was the 
Emperor who soothed them away. When a fretful Gour- 
gaud would take offence at something Napoleon had said 
or done, he was coaxed out of his ill-humor, or paternally 
sent to bed to sleep .it off. 

Note. — Lord Kosebery in his " Napoleon," says, " As to his 
habitation, Longwood was a collection of huts which had been con- 
structed as a cattle-shed. It was swept by an eternal wind ; it was 
shadeless, and it was damp, Lowe himself can say no good of it, and 
may have felt the strange play of fortune by which he was allotted 
the one delightful residence on the island with twelve thousand a 
year [about $60,000], while Napoleon was living in an old cow-house 
on eight." 



CHAPTER LI 

"ITANY visitors, passengers in English vessels, called to 
see him. Generally, but not always, he received 
them. Generally, but not always, visitors so received 
went away converted into sympathetic friends, sometimes 
enthusiastic partisans. Only a few days ago (April, 
1901) there died in London an aged man who, when a 
lad, saw the Emperor at St. Helena. The boy had been 
fascinated ; never ceased to recall the placid countenance, 
gentle, sonorous voice, and wonderfully expressive eye ; 
and spoke of Napoleon with enthusiasm to the last. 

If the world possessed a faithful record of Napoleon's 
conversation at St. Helena, no book would be more inter- 
esting, for he discoursed freely on almost every subject 
of human interest, and on most topics he touched he 
said something worth hearing. But we have only an 
imperfect, fragmentary, unreliable record. Long conver- 
sations extending through several hours, and jotted down 
by a secretary afterward, necessarily lose most of their 
flavor. It would be a miracle if such a method of report- 
ing so rapid a talker as Napoleon were accurate. 

On the subjects of death, religion, the soul, the here- 
after, he is differently reported, — or, rather, he held two 
lines of expression. When thinking of political effect 
and the interests of his son, he would of course remember 
the Catholic Church, its power, its creed, and would say 

687 



688 NAPOLEON chap. 

things which put him on the plane of the Concordat — 
the restorer of religion, the believer in Christ. But when 
he was not posing for effect, when he blurted out his real 
thoughts, all this disappeared. He did not believe in the 
modern doctrine about the soul, and scouted the idea of 
immortality. ^'" When we are dead, my dear Gourgaud, 
we are altogether dead." 

Again he would ask : " What is a soul ? Where is the 
soul of a sleeper, a madman, a babe?" In spite of that 
old-time pointing to the stars in the heavens and the oft- 
quoted question which we are told dumfounded the 
materialists, " Can you tell me who made all that ? " 
Napoleon at St. Helena proclaimed himself a materialist. 
Long before Darwin's great book appeared, Napoleon an- 
nounced his belief in the principle of evolution. His great 
difficulty in reconciling the dogma of a benevolent and just 
God with the universe as it exists, was that the facts seemed 
all against the dogma. In the days of his power he had 
said scornfully, ^' God fights on the side of the heavy bat- 
talions ; " at St. Helena he declared that he could not be- 
lieve in a just God punishing and rewarding, for good 
people are always unfortunate and scoundrels are always 
lucky. "'Look at Talleyrand ; he is sure to die in his bed!" 
And so he did ; and if the Pope's blessing was a passport 
to heaven, this most villanous of all Frenchmen reached 
heaven by the best and shortest route. The manner in 
which the weak — no matter how good — go down before 
the strong, — no matter how bad, — in human affairs, as 
in the realms of animal life, staggered his belief in the 
benevolence of the plan of creation. " Were I obliged to 
>/ have a religion, I would worship the Sun — the source of 
all life, the real god of earth." 



T.i ST. HELENA 689 

*' Why should punishment be eternal ? " Why damn a 
man who was brought into the world, not of his own will, 
\ / and who was stamped with certain qualities which almost 
inevitably determined his character and conduct — why 
punish such a man with the eternal torments of hell be- 
cause of a few years of sin? What good could it accom- 
plish to torture poor human beings forever and forever ? 
Would God never grow sorry ? No ? Then he was crueller 
than the savagest of the human race. Justice ! Could it 
be just to create men with certain passions, turn them 
loose for a few years to see what they would do, and then 
when they had done what the law of their nature made it 
almost inevitable that they would do, — and what God 
knew they would do before he created them, — was it just 
to burn these helpless wretches forever in the slow fires of 
hell ? Napoleon could not bring himself to think so. 

He said that, when in Egypt, the sheiks had disturbed 
him considerably by alleging that he was a pagan because 
he worshipped three gods. These sheiks, with tantalizing 
persistence, maintained that God the Father, God the Son, 
and God the Spirit made three gods. Of course Napoleon 
endeavored to explain to these benighted Arabs that our 
three gods were only one. The sheiks of Cairo, however, 
being men of primitive mind and stubborn habit, would 
not open their eyes to the truth, and they continued to 
say that Mahomet's creed was better than Christ's, because 
Mahometans believe in one God, only. All other celestial 
beings are angels, lower than God. Human beings, men 
born of women, may be prophets, martyrs, sublimely mis- 
sioned reformers, but they are not gods. 

"As for me," exclaimed Napoleon, on one occasion, "I 
do not believe in the divinity of Christ. He was put to 
2y 



690 NAPOLEON chap. 

death like any other fanatic who professed to be a prophet 
or a messiah. There were constantly people of this kind." 
As, indeed, there are. England crushed the last one in the 
Soudan a few years ago. 

The great sorrow of Napoleon in his captivity was the 
absence of his wife and son. He believed, or pretended 
to believe, that Maria Louisa was still faithful to him. 
He had been told of her shame, he had even hotly de- 
nounced the infamous manner in which her father had put 
her into the power of Neipperg, but with singular persist- 
ency he would return to the idea that she yet loved him, 
and would join him if the Allies would permit. He could 
not know that the mother of his child had declared that 
she did not love him, and never had loved him. 



A striking refrain, running through all the discussions of 
those acts of his reign which had been under hottest fire, 
^ is this, " History will do me justice." Time and again, 
after stating his explanations, reasons, motives, or justi- 
fication, he comes back to the words, " History will do me 
justice." 

Considering all the circumstances, the confidence was 
sublime. His was a blasted name throughout the world. 
In France it was bad taste to mention him. By formal 
enactment of combined Europe he was an outlaw, beyond 
the pale of humanity, a pariah whom all were privileged 
to stone. Only one newspaper of the free press of England 
had dared to say a word for him when the government 
was making a prisoner out of a man it had not captured ; 
only two members of Parliament dared protest against the 
wrong. 




»»^ \ ■^ 



THE KING OF ROME 
From the painting by Sir T. Lawrence 



u ST. HELENA 691 

In France his followers, Ney and Labedoyere, had been 
shot, and Lavalette condemned. Reaction was rushing 
like an avalanche, and sweeping all before it. Royalist 
Catholics were outdoing in the White Terror the atroci- 
ties of the Red. Italy was her old self again, and Murat 
had looked into the muzzles of the Bourbon muskets, and 
had said, with the last flash of the old courage and pride, 
" Save my face, aim at my heart — fire ! " Every pander 
who could distort or create was adding to the piles of 
books in which the Corsican monster was devoted to dam- 
nation here and hereafter. Yet, in spite of all, the cap- 
tive was serenely at ease about his future. 

"History will do me justice. My work will speak for 
itself. I shall soon be gone ; but what I did, and what I 
attempted, will live for ages. My public improvements, 
my canals, harbors, roads, monuments, churches, hospitals, 
my school system, my code, my organization of the civil 
service, my system of finance, the manufactures that 
sprang up at my touch, the arts and sciences encouraged, 
the libraries founded, the triumphs of democracy which I 
organized and made permanent — these are my witnesses, 
and to posterity they will testify. Your Wellingtons and 
your Metternichs may dam the stream of liberal ideas, 
checking the current for the time ; but the torrent will be 
only the stronger when it breaks. 

*^" From the passions of to-day, I appeal to the sober judg- 
ment of to-morrow. Future generations will remember 
my intentions, consider my difficulties, and judge me 
leniently." 

This superb confidence sustained him so buoyantly that 
he was never more imperial in his pose than at St. Helena. 
When Lowe threatened to have his room forcibly entered 



692 NAPOLEON chap. 

each day in order that the jailer might know his prisoner 
was still there, the indomitable Corsican said, " I'll kill 
the first man that tries it ! " and before that courage of 
despair even Hudson Lowe drew back. When England 
demanded his sword, he had placed his hand upon it and 
looked the British officer in the eye with an expression 
that could not be misunderstood. The brave and gener- 
ous Lord Keith, more chivalrous than his government, 
bowed to his captive, and retired without the sword. 

" Let him " (Lowe) " send all my friends away, if he 
will ; let him plant sentinels at the doors and windows, 
and give me nothing but bread and water: I care not. 
My soul is free. I am as independent as when I was at 
the head of six hundred thousand men ; as free as when 
I gave laws to Europe ! " 

Mr. Taine with painstaking malevolence traces Napo- 
leon back to Csesar Borgia ; but this granite formation of 
character was not Italian, it was Corsican. The spirit 
which here nerved the solitary captive to brave a world 
in arms was not that of his Italian father who bent the 
courtier's knee to the conquerors of his country; it was 
that of his Corsican mother, whose firmness of character 
resisted all fears and all temptations. In Napoleon, Italy 
may have reached her highest type ; but in him, also, Cor- 
sica saw the last and the greatest of the heroic race of 
Sampiero. 

" The atmosphere of modern ideas stifles the old feudal- 
ists, for henceforth nothing can destroy or deface the grand 
principles of our revolution. These great truths can never 
cease to exist. Created in the French Tribune, cemented 
by the blood of battles, adorned by the laurels of victory, 
hailed by the acclamations of the people, they can never be 



11 ST. HELENA 693 

turned backward. They live in Great Britain, illuminate 
America, they are nationalized in France. Behold the 
tripod from whence issues the light of the world ! They 
will yet triumph. They will be the faith, the religion, the 
morality of all peoples, and this era will be connected with 
my name. For, after all, I kindled the torch and conse- 
crated the principle, and now persecution makes me the 
Messiah of those principles. Friends and foes must ac- 
knowledge that of these principles I am the chief soldier, 
the grand representative. Thus, when I am in my grave, 
I shall still be, for the people, the polar star of their rights. 
My name will be the war-cry of their efforts." 

Scores of other quotations might be made to the same 
effect, and they go far to explain why modern liberalism 
regarded Napoleon as The Man. He grew to hate democ- 
racy ? Yes. He crushed opposition to his will rig- 
orously, pitilessly? Yes. He stifled free speech and 
smothered representative government? Yes. He was 
more despotic than any Bourbon ? Yes. Then how dared 
he predict that his name would become the war-cry of the 
people in their struggle for civil rights ? 

Because he knew that posterity would see at work, with- 
in the body of his despotism, the spirit of democracy. He 
knew that with his system of civil and social equality, and 
the absolute privilege of every citizen, however humbly 
born, to rise to the loftiest positions, no real despotism 
could be possible ; and that history would say so. When 
he, the Emperor, chosen by the people, stood up in his car- 
riage on the streets of Paris and pointed out to his Aus- 
trian bride the window of the room in which he had 
lodged when he came up from Brienne, — a poor boy with 
his career to make, — his pride in pointing to that mile- 



694 NAPOLEON chap. 

post on the toilsome route of his promotion was that of all 
self-made men, was that of the man who scorns to win 
where he has not fought, was that of the robust conqueror 
who wants nothing for which he has not paid the price of 
manly effort. 

It was the same spirit which flashed out of him when 
Metternich presented from the Emperor of Austria, in 1809, 
the proofs that he was descended from the nobility of 
Florence. 

" I will have none of such tomfoolery. My patent of 
nobility dates from the battle of Montenotte ! " 

It was the same spirit which moved him to chide Duroc, 
his beloved Duroc, when that highest officer of the palace 
had been rude to Constant, the valet. Constant being in 
tears about it. 

The same spirit was on him when he stopped to talk 
with poor Toby, the Malay slave of St. Helena, and to give 
him money ; the same when he rebuked Madame Balcombe, 
who with angry voice ordered some heavily burdened 
slaves to give way to her, in a steep, narrow path, — 
" Respect the burden, Madame ! " 

Thought, feelings, deeds like these are not born in 
hearts barren of human sympathy, dead to the sense of 
fraternity, or alien to the sentiment which inspires the 
mystic to strive for the good of all. 



Bertrand states that after 1820 Napoleon was a con- 
firmed invalid. Sitting in his chair, clad in dressing-gown, 
he spent the days reading, being no longer able to work or 
dictate. 

" What a delightful thing rest is. The bed has become 



M ST. HELENA 695 

for me a place of luxury. How fallen am I. Once my 
activity was boundless ; my mind never slumbered ; I 
sometimes dictated to four or five secretaries, who wrote 
as fast as words could be uttered. But then I was Napo- 
leon. Now I am nothing. I am sunk into a stupor, I can 
hardly raise my eyelids, my faculties forsake me. I do not 
live ; I merely exist." 

Through March and April, 1821, he was slowly dying, 
and suffering torments from his ailment — cancer of the 
stomach. His patience and his kindness to those around 
him were perfect. 

On one of the last days of April he said to Montholon, 
early in the morning on awakening from sleep : " I have 
just seen the good Josephine. I reached out my arms to 
embrace her, and she disappeared. She was seated there. 
It seemed to me that I had seen her yesterday evening. 
She is not changed; she loves me yet. Did you see 
her?" 

Burning fever and delirium marked these final days ; but 
in the lucid intervals he was calm, fearless, and thought- 
ful for the friends about him. On May 4 Bertrand asked 
l/ him if he would have a priest. " No, I want no man to 
teach me how to die." Nevertheless, he accepted the 
usual clerical services. And the picture of a densely 
ignorant and dull-minded priest, taking possession of 
Napoleon Bonaparte, hearing his confessions and grant- 
ing him heavenly passports, is one of those things which 
makes the vocabulary of amazement seem to need enlarge- 
ment and intensification. 

It would not, perhaps, be difficult to explain why Napo- 
leon, in his last illness, accepted the services of a priest, 
and died in the arms of the Church ; but it puzzles one to 



696 NAPOLEON chai^ 

understand why he embalmed in his Will his delusion as 
to Maria Louisa. He had long known of her infidelity, he 
received no line or message from her during the whole 
time of his captivity ; yet he speaks of her in his will as 
though she had ever been the true and loving wife. Was 
this done from personal pride ? Or did he do it for the 
sake of his son ? Both motives may have influenced him, 
especially the latter. 

A storm was raging over the island on May 4. " The 
rain fell in torrents, and a fierce gale howled over the 
drenched crags of St. Helena. Napoleon's favorite willow 
was torn up by the roots, and every tree he had planted at 
Longwood was blown down. 

" The night was very bad," says Montholon. " Toward 
two o'clock delirium set in, accompanied by nervous 
contractions. Twice I thought I heard the words, France 
— armee — tete d'armee — Josephine, at the same time the 
Emperor sprang from the bed, in spite of my efforts to 
restrain him. His strength was so great that he threw me 
down, heavily falling to the floor." 

Others, hearing the noise, ran in, and the Emperor was 
put back upon the bed, where he became calm again. At 
six in the morning the death-rattle was heard. As Mon- 
tholon approached the bed, the dying man made a sign that 
he wanted water. He was past swallowing ; his thirst could 
only be allayed by a sponge pressed to his lips. He then 
lay all day with his eyes fixed, seemingly in deep medita- 
tion. As the sun was setting, he died — the evening gun 
of the English fort booming across the sea as his life went 
out. 

" Ah," said Marchand, "he died in the arms of victory ! 
He called for Desaix, Lannes, Duroc. I heard him order 



LI ST. HELENA 697 

up the artillery, and then he cried : ' Deploy the eagles ! 
Onward ! ' " 

" I shall never forget," says Stewart, " Marshal Bertrand 
coming out of the room and announcing, in a hollow voice, 
' The Emperor is dead,' the last word being accompanied 
by a deafening peal of thunder." 

Napoleon had made his preparations for death with the 
composure of an ancient pagan. He had given minute 
instructions to all about him as to their duties when he 
should be gone, and had directed an autopsy of his body in 
order that the true character of his disease might be known, 
for the benefit of his son. He inquired of the young priest 
whether he knew how to arrange the death chapel ; and 
he dictated the form of notice which should be sent Sir 
Hudson Lowe when he. Napoleon, should be dead. In his 
Will, written by his own hand, he set out an elaborate list 
of legacies, including those who had befriended his boy- 
hood, and those who had been loyal to him in the days 
of his power, as well as those whose fidelity had been 
the comfort of his captivity and dying hours. From his 
mother and nurse to his teachers and schoolfellows, his 
companions-in-arms and the children of those who had died 
in battle at his side, to the Old Guard and the faithful few 
at St. Helena, he swelled the debt of gratitude, and honored 
himself in remembering others. In regard to this Will, it 
may be of interest to state that only a small portion of 
the vast assets Napoleon claimed to have left in Europe 
could be found by his executors, and that during the 
second Empire the State voted 11,600,000 toward the un- 
paid legacies. 

Given the funeral of a general officer, his unmarked 
coffin was borne by soldiers down into the little valley. 



698 NAPOLEON 



where was the willow, under which he often rested, and 
the spring whose waters had so refreshed him in the fever 
of his long decline. Here he was buried. May 8, 1821. 



One day, at St. Helena, there was a stormy interview 
between prisoner and jailer, between Napoleon and Sir 
Hudson Lowe. The book from Hobhouse had been kept 
by the governor, and this and many other things the cap- 
tive resented. 

" I detained the book because it was addressed to the 
Emperor,'''' said Lowe. 

" And who gave you the right to dispute that title ? " 
cried Napoleon, indignantly. 

" In a few years your Lord Castlereagh and all the others, 
and you yourself, will be buried in the dust of oblivion ; 
or, if your names be remembered at all, it will be only on 
account of the indignity with which you have treated me; 
but the Emperor Napoleon will continue forever the sub- 
ject, the ornament of history, and the star of civilized 
nations. Your libels are of no avail against me. You 
have expended millions on them ; what have they pro- 
duced ? Truth pierces through the clouds ; it shines like 
the sun, and like the sun it cannot perish ! " 

To which proud boast. Sir Hudson Lowe replied, as he 
records, " You make me smile, sir." 

Sir Hudson may have smiled then, and may have kept on 
smirking as long as Napoleon lived. Nothing seemed less 
likely than that the prophetic words of the prisoner would 
come true. But there came a time when Sir Hudson did 
not smile. When death had released the prisoner, and the 
faithful companions of his years of misery went home and 



LI ST. HELENA 699 

told their story, — O'Meara in England, Las Casas and 
Montholon in France, — Sir Hudson did not smile; for 
all Europe rang with his name, and all generous hearts 
condemned him. He turned to British courts for vindi- 
cation, and did not get it. He applied to the English 
ministers for high, permanent employment and liberal pen- 
sion, and he got neither the one nor the other. Young 
Las Casas invited him to fight, and he did not fight. He 
dropped into a contempt which was so deep and so uni- 
versal that even Wellington, in effect, turned his back upon 
the creature he had used, having no further need for just 
such a man. 

" You make me smile, sir," said amused Sir Hudson, 
when the shabbily clad, prematurely decrepit man, stand- 
ing on the hearth of his dismal room, prophesied his politi- 
cal resurrection and his final triumph over his enemies. 
Had Castlereagh heard, he also would have smiled, not 
foreseeing that ghastly climax to political prostitution, 
when, after a lifetime of truckling to royalism, and of 
doing its foulest work, he should find the whole world 
turn black, should cut his own throat, and be followed 
to his tomb by the hoots of an English mob ! 

Wellington, too, would have been amused at hearing 
the prisoner's prophecy; would have thought Napoleon 
insane, not foreseeing the perilous times in England 
when the progress of liberalism would break the line of 
his Tory opposition ; would win triumphs for reform in 
spite of his threat that he would have his dragoons 
"sharp grind their sabres as at Waterloo." With the 
windows of his London home smashed by a British mob, 
with millions of liberals shouting demands for better laws, 
so fiercely that even Wellington gave up trust in those 



700 NAPOLEON chap. 

sharp-ground swords, there came a day when the Iron 
Duke may have remembered the prophet of St. Helena, 
and read the words again — without the smile. 

"In a few years you and all the others will be buried 
in the dust of oblivion ; but the Emperor will live for- 
ever, the ornament of history, the star of civilized 
nations ! " 

It was a proud boast, and proudly has time made it good. 
In a few years the Bourbons had played out their shabby 
parts on the throne of France, and had gone into final 
and hopeless exile, " unwept, unhonored, and unsung." 

Liberalism had risen from defeats, and made its will 
supreme. Both in England and in France the Old Order 
had passed away, principles more enlightened prevailed. 
A new day had dawned, not cloudless nor free from 
storm, but better and brighter than 1816 or 1821. In the 
year of our Lord 1840, the thought of the two great 
nations turned to the grave at St. Helena. France asked, 
and England gave — whom? The Emperor! Not 
" Bonaparte " nor " General Bonaparte," save in the 
minds of the very small and the exceedingly venomous ; 
but Napoleon, " the Emperor and king." 

The grave at St. Helena was opened; the perfectly 
preserved face, beautiful in death, uncovered amid sighs and 
tears ; and then the body, taken away to be entombed 
" upon the banks of the Seine in the midst of the people 
I have so much loved," was received on board a royal ship, 
by a prince of the Bourbon house of Orleans, with masts 
squared, flags flying, cannon booming, drums beating, and 
every note of triumph swelling the pomp of that imperial 
reception. With a vast outpouring of the people, France 
welcomed the greatest Frenchman home. 



n ST. HELENA 701 

" Truth cuts through the clouds ; shines like the sun ; 
and like the sun it is immortal ! " Sublime confidence, 
sublimely justified ! 

" You make me smile, sir," said Lowe ; but that was 
many years since. It is 1840 now, and Napoleon's turn 
has come. 

From king to peasant, all France starts up to meet her 
returning hero. He comes back to a throne which none 
dispute. He comes back to a dominion no Marmont can 
betray. Allied kings will league themselves in vain to 
break that imperial supremacy. No Talleyrand or Fouche 
or Bourmont can find for treachery a leverage to overthrow 
that majestic power. No. It is secure in a realm which 
envy and malice and ignoble passion may invade, but can- 
not conquer. It has linked itself with things immortal ; 
and for this imperial career and fame there can be no 
death. 

Let Cherbourg's thousand guns salute ! Let triumphal 
arches span the Seine as he passes on his way ! Let hill 
and slope and river bank hold their gazing hosts ! Let 
flowers and garlands shower down on the bier from every 
bridge. Let aged peasants drop on reverent knees, fire 
the old musket in humble salute, and then cover the weep- 
ing faces with trembling hands ! Cold is this December 
day; but winter cannot chill this vast enthusiasm. From 
the quay, where the funeral barge moors, to the Church 
of the Invalides, where the tomb waits, a million people 
throng the route. Streets, avenues, squares, balconies, 
windows, roofs, trees — all are full of people. Cannons, 
drums, military bands, the tramp of men and war-horses, 
the glitter of endless lines of soldiers, the songs which 
rouse the passions and the memories, the shouts of dense 



702 NAPOLEON chap. 

crowds stirred by electrical emotions — all these mark this 
December day as the gorgeous funeral car bears Napoleon 
to his final rest. There is the white war-horse, not 
Marengo, but one like him ; and upon the horse is the 
saddle and the bridle Napoleon had used. There are his 
old Marshals Moncey, and Soult, and Oudinot ; there is 
Bertrand and Gourgaud and Las Casas, the faithful com- 
panions of his long exile. But above all there are the 
I'elics of his ancient wars to come weeping around the 
bier ; and there is a remnant of his Old Guard to march 
with him to his tomb. Oh, the magic of the mighty dead ! 
No freezing December air can keep down the fervor which 
makes the great city ring with cries of " Live the 
Emperor ! " 

Sixteen black horses, plumed and draped, draw the 
lofty funeral car over which lies the purple velvet robe, 
and in which is the coffin — marked, at last, in letters of 
gold, "Napoleon." Princes of the Church come forth to 
meet the body ; a king and his court and the proudest 
notables of France wait within to receive it. 

" The Emperor ! " cries the herald at the door; and the 
brilliant assembly rises, as one man, and makes the rever- 
ent bow to the dead man who enters. 

Over all is the spell of a master spirit; over all the 
spell of a deathless past. 

The sword of Austerlitz is handed to King Louis 
Philippe by Soult ; and the King gives it to the faithful 
Bertrand ; and Bertrand lays it, reverently, upon his 
master's coffin. The awful stillness of the great temple 
is broken by the sobs of gray-haired soldiers. 

With a grand Requiem chant, the funeral ends ; but the 
silent procession of mourners coming in endless lines to 



ti ST. HELENA . ' 703 

view the coffin lasts more than a week, bringing people 
from all parts of France, from Belgium, and from other 
lands. 

Nor has that procession ended yet. Around the great 
man, lying there in his splendid tomb, with his marshals 
near him and the battle-flags he made famous drooping 
about him, still flows the homage of the world. The 
steps of those who travel, like the thoughts of those who 
are students of human affairs, turn from the four quarters 
of the earth to the tomb of this mightiest of men. 

His impress lies upon France forever, in her laws, her 
institutions, her individual and national life ; but his 
empire does not stop with France, — is cramped by no 
" natural limits " of Rhine and Alps and Pyrenees. 

By force of genius and of character, by superior fitness 
to do great things, he was the chief usurper of his time. 
He is the usurper yet, and for the same reasons. He did 
the work kings ought to have done, — doing it in spite of 
the kings. He does it yet, in spite of the kings. 

His hand, as organizer of the Revolution, which was 
greater even than he, is at the loom where the life-gar- 
ments of nations are woven. Listen to this voice, com- 
ing out of Italy : " Within the space of ten years we had 
made [under Napoleon] more progress than our ancestors 
had done in three centuries. We had acquired the French 
civil, criminal, and commercial codes ; we had abolished 
the feudal system, and justice was administered with im- 
proved methods." So wrote General P^p^ ; and what he 
said of Italy was equally true of every other portion of 
Continental Europe which had come under the imperial 
sway. It was this work Napoleon was doing from the very 
first day he grasped the reins of power ; it was this work 



704 ♦ NAPOLEON chap, li 

the allied kings dreaded ; it was this work they meant 
to stop. 

In that he strove for himself and his dynasty, Napoleon 
failed miserably, for to that extent he betrayed his trust, 
was false to his mission, wandered from the road. But 
so far as his toil was for others, for correct principles, for 
better laws, better conditions, productive of happier homes 
and better men and women, he did not fail. No Leipsic 
or Waterloo could destroy what was best in his career : 
no William Pitt could pile up sufficient gold to bribe into 
the field kings strong enough to chain peoples as they had 
once been chained. In vain was Metternich's Holy Alli- 
ance, his armed resistance to liberal ideas ; his savage 
laws, his inhuman dragoonings : — the immortal could not 
be made to die. 



INDEX 



Abensberg, battle of, 440. 

Aboukir, battle of, 219-220. 

Acre, siege of, 215. 

"Act Additional" — amendment to 

Constitution, 1814, 637-639. 
Adige, French defence, 156-167. 
Ajaccio — 

Birthplace of Napoleon, 17. 

Paoli, see that title. 

Reception of Napoleon, 1799, 230- 

232. 
Revolutionary movements, 1789, 

49-60. 
[See also Corsica.] 
Alexander, Czar of Russia — 
Erfurth conference, 428. 
Successor of Paul, 291. 
Vienna Congress, 620-623. 
[See also Russia.] 
Alexandria taken by Napoleon, 203. 
Alps crossed, 1800, 280. 
Alvinczy, General, defeated by Napo- 
leon, 162-168. 
Amiens, Peace of, 293 ; ruptured, 

312. 
Amnesty to political offenders during 

Consulate, 258. 
Ancients, council of, see Council of 

Ancients. 
Andre, Abbe d', rumors as to move- 
ments of Napoleon at Elba, 624- 
625. 
Antommarchi, death mask of Napo- 
leon, 388. 
Aragon, aid in Corsican struggle for 

independence, 3, 4. 
Arcis on the Aube, battle of, 576. 
Army of France — 

Creation of new army by Napoleon, 
1800, 279-282 ; 1813, 506. 



Army of France, continried — 

Destruction in Russia, retreat from 

Moscow, 1812, 493-499, 504. 
Napoleon in — 

Commander, 112-114, 126. 
Loss of position, name struck 
from list of generals, 60-64, 
104. 
Western transfer, order evaded, 
94-96, 104. 
Reorganization by Napoleon, 264, 
636. 
Artois, Count of, conspiracy against 

Napoleon, 317-328. 
Aspern, battle of, 442-443, 450. 
Aube River crossing, incident, 672. 
Aubrey — 

Exile, 258, 259. 

Napoleon transferred to army of 
the West, 95, 96. 
Auerstadt, battle of, 362, 364. 
Augereau, General — 

Coup d'etat of 18th Brumaire, 245, 

251. 
Directory supported by, during 
royalist movement, 182-184, 236. 
Italian campaign, 162-164, 168. 
Austerlitz, battle of, 347, 349. 
Austria — 

1793, French booty, bargain with 

England, 83. 
1796, Napoleon's Italian Campaign, 

144-186. 
1799-1800, operations in Italy, peace 

of Lune'ville, 224, 279-290. 
1805, coalition of powers, defeat at 

Austerlitz, 339-347, 355-357. 
1809, renewal of war, Wagram, etc., 
439-449. 

1812, ally of France, 476, 477. 

1813, rising in Germany, mediation 
offered, 507-521, 554-556. 



2z 



706 



706 



INDEX 



Austria, continued — 

1813-15, coalition of powers and 

fall of Napoleon, 523-648. 
1814, Vienna Congress, 6'20-623. 
Secret treaty with Napoleon alleged , 

623, 639. 
[See also Charles, Archduke, and 
Francis, Emperor.] 
Avignon, Girondin revolt, 70, 71. 



Barras, General — 

Character, and misgovernment as 

Director, 125-128. 
Directory, movement against, and 

fall of, 106, 182, 237-247. 
Memoirs of Napoleon, 82. 
Bassano, peace treaty, 1814, 571. 
" Battle of the Nations," 1813, 534. 
Bautzen, battle of, 510. 
Bavaria — 

Deserts Napoleon in 1813, 534, 537, 

541. 
Refusal to enter coalition against 
France, 1806, 349. 
Baylen, capitulation of, 427. 
Bayonne, Napoleon at, 419-421. 
Beauharnais, Eugene — 
Jaffa massacre, 213. 
Moscow retreat, 491, 494. 
Viceroy of Italy, 336. 
Beauharnais, Josephine, see Jose- 
phine. 
Beauharnais, Stephanie, dancing an- 
ecdote, 32. 
Beaulieu, Austrian general, defeated 
by Napoleon, 144, 154, 155, 
159. 
Bellerophon, British ship, Napoleon 

sent to St. Helena, 672, 673. 
Bennigsen, Russian general, campaign 

against Napoleon, 381-383. 
Bentinck, Lord, duplicity of, 563. 
Beresina, crossed by French troops, 

1812, 497-499. 
Berg, Grand Duchy of, created, 1806, 

351. 
Berlin — 

Entered by Napoleon, 1806, 366- 

369. 
March abandoned, 1813, 533-534. 



Berlin Decree, 369-371, 416, 
Bernadotte, General — 

Desertion of Napoleon, 1812-14, 475, 

526, 538, 566-573. 
Italian campaign, 175, 176. 
Norway transferred to Swedish 

dominion, 623. 
Policy, 18th Brumaire, 243, 248, 

249. 
Sweden, Prince Royal of, 1810, 
463465. 
Berthier, General — 

Austrian campaign, 1809, misman- 
agement, 439, 440. 
Commander-in-chief of army in 

Italy, 1800, 280. 
Desertion of Napoleon, 1814, 592- 

594. 
Metternich's interview with Napo- 
leon, 1813, 517. 
Bessieres, commander of Imperial 

Guard, 155; death of, 526. 
Bliicher, Prussian general — 
Germany, rising in, 1813, 509. 
Hostilities of 1813, battle of Leip- 

sic, etc., 527, 533, 535. 
War of 1814-15, battle of Waterloo, 
etc., 566-577, 648-671. 
Bohemia, Congress of Prague, 521-523, 

545. 
Bonaparte, Caroline, wife of Murat, 
Berg, Grand Duchy of, created 1806, 

350-351. 
Treachery of, 562, 563. 
Bonaparte, Charles, father of Napo- 
leon, 19-27, 41. 
Bonaparte, Jerome, king of West- 
phalia, see Westphalia. 
Bonaparte, Joseph — 

Italy, crown refused, 336. 
Naples, King of, 350, 421. 
President of Council of Regency in 
Paris, betrayal of Napoleon, 
1814, 564, 575, 578-579. 
Spain, King of, 421. 

Complaint of interference of 

Napoleon, 435. 
Driven from throne, 430, 564. 
Bonaparte, Letitia R., mother of Na- 
poleon, 19-21. 
Absence at coronation, 333. 
Life at Elba, 605, 624. 



INDEX 



707 



Bonaparte, Louis — 
Holland, king of, 350. 

Complaint as to interference of 

Napoleon, 435. 
Vacates throne, 462-464. 
Maintenance and ingratitude dur- 
ing boyhood, 53, 57. 
Bonaparte, Lucien — 

Pamphlet issued by, 289. 
President of Council of Five Hun- 
dred on 18th Brumaire, 235, 252- 
253. 
Refuses bribe offered by Napoleon, 
351. 
Bonaparte, Napoleon, see Napoleon. 
Bonaparte, Pauline, Life at Elba, 603, 

605, 624. 
Borodino, battle of, 483. 
Bourbon restoration, 1814, 583-586, 

598-627. 
Bourmout, rise and treason in army of 

Napoleon, 649. 
Bourrienne — 

Anecdotes of Napoleon, 27, 218, 220, 

235, 242, 255, 283. 
Betrayal of Napoleon, 552. 
Brienne — 

College, unpopularity of Napoleon, 

26-33. 
Visit to, 1804, 334. 
War of 1814, 335, 568, 
Brougham, Lord, anecdote of Napo- 
leon, 405. 
Brueys, French admiral, defeat by 

Nelson, 208. 
Brumaire,- coup d'etat of 18th Bru- 
maire, 241-255. 
Brunswick, Duke of, wounded at 

Auerstadt, 364. 
Busca, Cardinal, French campaign, 

170. 
Bussey, schoolmate of Napoleon, 31, 

32, 593. 
Buttafuoco, Corsican representative 
in France, Napoleon's " open 
letter," 52, 53, 64. 



Cadoudal conspiracy, 318-328. 
Caffarelli, General, French capture 
of Malta, 202. 



Cairo — 

March to, 203. 

Retreat, 217-219. 

Revolt, war principles of Napo* 

leon, 211. 
Cambaceres, consul, opposition to ar- 
rest of Duke d'Enghien, 324. 
Cambronne, royalist commander, re-^ 

turn of Napoleon from Elba, 

1814, 630. 
Campo Formio, treaty of, 178-187. 
Cannes, landing of Napoleon from 

Elba, 1814, 626, 629. 
Carnot, Memoirs of, 646, 668. 
Carraccioli, Admiral, murder of, 225, 

226. 
Carteaux, abandonment of Toulon 

command to Napoleon, 73-78. 
Castlereagh, Lord, Vienna Congress, " 

1814, 620. 
Caulaincourt — 

Abdication of Napoleon, 588-589. 
Peace negotiations, 1813-14, 570- 

571. 
Cavour, statecraft policy, confession, 

374. 
Censorship of the Press, 1814, 614. 
Ceracchi conspiracy, 288. 
Cervoni, Corsican general. Napoleon 

and Toulon, 75, 76. 
Champ de Mai, 1815, 641. 
Champ-Aubert, battle of, 569. 
Charles, Archduke of Austria — 

Austerlitz defeat, treaty of Pres- 

burg, 344, 347. 
Defeat of Jourdan and Massena, 

224. 
Italian campaign, defeated by Na- 
poleon, 162, 175-177. 
Opinion of Napoleon, 1814, 6. 
Renewal of war, 1809, 439-449. 
Charles, Captain Hypolite, and Jose- 
phine, 193, 209, 235. 
Charles IV. of Spain, abdication, 418- 

419, 425. 
" Charter," issued and violated by 

Louis XVIII, 1814, 601, 612-618. 
Ch§,tillon Peace Congress, .570. 
Chinese massacres, comparison with 

Jaffa massacre, etc., 215, 218. 
Choiseul, French minister, purchase of 

Corsica, 14, 15, 26. 



708 



INDEX 



Church, Concordat of 1801, 302-309, 

453. 
Church atrocities, Bourbon restora- 
tion, 1814, 614-619. 
Cisalpine Republic — 

Creation of, 195. 

Italian Republic formed, 329. 

Reorganization, 286. 
Coalitions of European powers — 

1793, 83, 115-121. 

1798, peace of Luneville, 222-290. 

1805, Austerlitz, peace of Presburg, 
339-347. 

1806, Jena, Treaty of Tilsit, 355- 
385. 

1813, Dresden, etc., 523^82. 
Armistice, 511-556. 
Desperate position of Napo- 
leon, 525-526, 548-553. 
Determination of Allies to 

crush Napoleon, 554-557. 
Support of nation weakened 
by illegitimacy of Napo- 
leon's kingdom, 548-549. 
1814r-15, 635-670. 

[See also names of Powers, Eng- 
land, Russia, etc.] 
Cobentzel, Austrian diplomat, Campo 

Formio treaty, 184-187. 
Cockburn, Sir George, treatment of 
Napoleon during voyage to St. 
Helena, 677-678. 
Codification of laws — the Code Napo- 
leon, 300-302, 412, 413. 
Commercial war, see Continental sys- 
tem. 
Concordat, work of the First Consul, 

302-309, 453. 
Confederation of the Rhine — 
Formation, 350, 352. 
Overthrow, 544. 
Prussian army against, 364. 
Rising in Germany, 1813, 509, 510. 
Constant, valet of Napoleon, anec- 
dotes, 390, 400, 456, 457, 458, 466, 
468, 488, 507, 526, 531, 534, 538, 
561, 565, 575, 594, 596. 
Constitution, see Consulate, Empire, 

Republic, etc. 
Consulate — Napoleon as First Consul, 
257-271, 280. 
Life tenure of consulship, 310. 



Consulate, continued — 

Peace overtures during, 275-278. 
Reforms in the republic, 256-273, 
295-302. 
Continental system, 369-371, 386, 416. 
Holland, aid to Great Britain in 

violating system, 436. 
Tilsit treaty with Russia, violation, 
470-478. 
Convention, adjournment and new 

Constitution, 104-112. 
Corsica — 

Ajaccio, see that title. 

British occupation, failure of 

French expedition, 92-94. 
British withdrawal, 1796, 195. 
Description, situation, etc., 1. 
Early patriotism of Napoleon, 

24-30. 
Incorporation with France, organi- 
zation of governments, 1789, 50, 
51. 
History of foreign supremacy and 
struggle for independence, 1-16. 
Napoleon's activity in favor of 

French Revolution, 49-52. 
Napoleon's ambition to achieve in- 
dependence of Corsica, 45, 64. 
National Guard election, arrest of 

French commissioner, 58, 59. 
Paoli, see that title. 
"Corsican ogre," name given to Na- 
poleon, 419, 466. 
Corunna, battle of, 433. 
Council of Ancients, fall of the Direc- 
tory, 18th Brumaire, 241-251. 
Council of Five Hundred — 

Directory, fall of, 18th Brumaire, 

241-253. 
Lucien Bonaparte, deputy and 
president, 235, 252-253. 
Councils, removal of, 236-241. 
Craonne, battle of, 575. 
Cumberland, Duke of, massacre of 
tlighlanders after Culloden, 214. 
Czernischeff, Russian general, spy on 
French army, 1812, 474. 

D 

Danube — 

Cession of provinces to Russia, 
1808, 429. 



INDEX 



709 



Danube, continued — 

Crossed by French forces, 1809, 441- 

"VFar between Russia and Turkey, 
1812, 473, 475, 481. 
D'Argenteau, Napoleon's victory of 

Montenotte, 138-140. 
Daru, coalition of 1813, 524r-525. 
Davidovitch, defeat of, 161-168. 
Davoust, French general — 

Austrian campaign, 1809, Wa- 

gram, 440-448. 
Berlin, entry into, 1806, 366. 
Campaign of 1814, Napoleon's 
error in overlooking Davoust, 
648, 657. 
Defeat of Prussian forces, 362. 
Moscow retreat, 494. 
De Barrin — French Revolution, Napo- 
leon's movements, 49, 50. 
Dejean, General, messenger to Joseph 
Bonaparte, fall of Paris, 1814, 
578-579. 
Delia Rocca, A., G., and R., Corsi- 

can struggle, 3, 5. 
D'Enghien, Duke, execution of, 322- 

327. 
Denmark, British seizure of fleet, 

415-416. 
D'Erlon, mistake at Ligny, 652-653. 
Des Mazis, aid to Napoleon, 101. 
Desaix, death of, 285. 
Desgenettes, surgeon of French 

army in Egypt, 218. 
Directory — 

Napoleon's success and power 

feared, 147, 193, 194. 
Misgovern ment under Barras and 

others, 123-125, 135. 
Organization of, 112. 
Supported by Napoleon during roy- 
alist insurrection, 182-184. 
Weakness and overthrow of, 236- 
255, 273. 
Djezzar, Napoleon's campaign in 

Egypt, 213, 216-217. 
Dolgorouki, demands surrender of 
Italy, etc. from Napoleon, 
344. 
Doria, S., Corsican struggle, 7. 
Dresden — 

Battle of, 1813, 527-532. 



Dresden, continued — 

Conferences, 1812, 1813, 476-479, 
516-519. 

Dubois de Crance, warning to Direc- 
tory against Napoleon, 243, 
246. 

Dugomier, General, siege of Toulon, 
78. 

Dumas — reforms by Napoleon, 1814, 
636. 

Dumont, J., recognition by Napo- 
leon, 1814, 603. 

Duroc, General, death of, 526. 

Dutch delegation, congratulations on 
Jena victory, 379-380. 

E 

Eckmuhl, battle of, 440, 441. 
Education reform during Consulate, 

295, 298. 
Egypt — 

British conquest, 292. 
French invasion, 199-227. 
Napoleonic improvements, 207, 411. 
Religious observances, 206, 689. 
Elba, Napoleon's exile — 
Departure for, 596. 
Journey, 601-602 ; landing, 605. 
Life at, 605-610. 
Return of Napoleon, 623-628. 

Political position in France, 627. 
Reception in France, 623-636. 
War with Allies, 635, 639-640. 
Terms of Treaty of Fontainebleau, 
595, 608. 
Elbe, concentration of French forces, 

1813, 530, 533. 
Elchingen, battle of, 341. 
Elster bridge, French retreat, 1813, 

538, 540. 
Emigres, release of, 258, 587. 
Empire, French — 

Dreams of empire, 305. 
Napoleon proclaimed Emperor, 
coronation, 331-333; anniver- 
sary of coronation, 346. 
Enghien, Duke d', execution of, 322- 

327. 
England — 

Austerlitz, battle of, consternation 
at result of, 349. 



710 



INDEX 



England, continued — 

Coalitions, 1793, 83, 115-121 ; 1798, 

222; 1805,339; 1813, 523; 1814, 

566 ; 1815, 648. 
Continental system, see that title. 
Corsica, occupation of, 92-94 ; with- 
drawal, 195. 
Danish fleet seized by, 415-416. 
Egypt and Malta taken, 292, 312. 
Encouragement to Austria to war 

against France, 290, 439. 
French Invasion of England, 1805, 

preparations and defeat of Napo- 
leon, 339-340. 
Napoleon's hatred of, 83-85. 
Nelson, see that title. 
Newspaper abuse of Napoleon, 314. 
Northern confederation against, 

treaty of Tilsit, 385. 
Peace offered by Napoleon, and 

rejected, 275-277, 339, 430. 
Portugal, British defeat of French, 

427. 
St. Helena, Napoleon as prisoner of 

war, 672-676. 
Vienna Congress, 1814, dispute as 

to division of territory, 620- 

623. 
War declared, 1804, seizures of 

French property, 315. 
War loans and paper currency, 353. 
Waterloo, battle of, 660-667. 
Wellington, see that title. 
Enzersdorf , battle of, 446. 
Erfurth conference, 428. 
Essling, battle of, 442. 
Eylau, battle of, 381. 



Ferdinand of Naples, entry into Rome, 

1798, 222, 223. 
Ferdinand of Spain — 

Disputes with Charles IV, 418-419, 

425. 
Proclaimed king of Spain, sur- 
render of crown to Napoleon, 
418-421. 
Release refused, 1813, 558; granted, 
1814, 612, 613. 
Financial reforms, 297, 352-354. 
First Consul, see Consulate. 



Five Hundred, Council of, see Council 

of Five Hundred. 
Fleury, Cardinal, Corsican struggle, 12. 
Fontainebleau — 

Abdication of Napoleon, 1814, 588- 

594. 
Conference with Pope, 1813, 508. 
Departure for Elba, 1814, 596. 
Napoleon at, 1814, news of fall of 
Paris, 581, 583. 
Fontainebleau, Treaty of, terms and 

violation of, 595, 60&-608. 
Fouche — 

Betrayal of Napoleon, 553. 
Provisional government after Wa- 
terloo, 668-670. 
Fox, British ministry, 1806, 359, 363. 
Francis, Emperor of Austria — 
Centre of Austrian loyalty, 549. 
Conduct regarding Maria Louisa, 
606, 607. 
Frankfort proposals, insincerity of, 

555-562. 
Frederick the Great, tomb of, sash and 
sword taken by Napoleon, 368, 
369. 
Frederick, King of Prussia, centre of 

Prussian loyalty, 648. 
French revolution — 

Foreign intervention feared, 1791, 

56. 
Napoleon sides with nation, activity 

in Corsica, 47-52. 
Swiss defence and Westermann at- 
tack, Napoleon's attitude, 61- 
63. 
Valence ceremonies, new oath of 
allegiance, 1791, 55. 
Friedland, battle of, 383. 
Fructidor, coup d'etat of, 183, 258. 
Fulton steamboat invention, 402. 

G 

Gaffori, Corsican chief, fall of, 13. 
Gap, return of Napoleon from Elba, 

1814, 630. 
Genoa — 

Annexation to France, 1804, 338. 

Corsican struggle, 2-14. 

Disturbances, 1796, 156. 

Napoleon's mission in, 1794, 88. 



INDEX 



711 



George IV. of England, Napoleon's 
appeal for British protection, 
1815, 674. 
Greorges conspiracy, 318-328, 417. 
Germany — 

Aid to Corsica, 10. 

Confederation of the Rhine, see that 

title. 
Hatred of French principles by feu- 
dal powers, origin of Prussian 
war, 364. 
Redistribution of lands, 329-331. 
Rising against France, 1813, 506- 
522, 54^-545. 
Giampolo, Corsican independence, 5. 
Girondin revolt, 70, 71. 
Godoy, Spanish minister, fall of, 417- 

421. 
Gohier, fall of the Directory, 239-247. 
Gourgand, General, complaints of neg- 
lect, 569. 
Government of France — 

Legislative body, see that title. 
Louis XVIII, see that title. 
Provisional government, 1815, 667- 

671 
Reorganizations, 256-273, 636-641. 
[See also Consulate, Directory, etc.] 
Great Britain, see England. 
Great St. Bernard, crossed 1800, 280. 
Grenoble, reception of Napoleon in 

1814, 630-631. 
Grenville, Lord, Napoleon's peace 

overtures, 276. 
Grossbeeren, battle of, 530. 
Grouchy, conduct of, 1814-15, 648-667. 
Guadamara mountains, crossed, 1808, 
432. 

H 

Hanau, battle of, 542. 

Hanover, ceded to Prussia, 1806, 367, 
359, 363. 

Hatzfeldt, Prince, treachery of, 367. 

Haugwitz, Prussian envoy to Napo- 
leon, 357. 

Hautef ort. Marquis de — Thellusson 
ball, 133. 

Heilsberg, battle of, 383. 

Helvetic republic established, 222. 

Hinton, sailor on board the Un- 
daunted, 604-605. 



Hobhouse, writings of, 642, 682. 

Hoche, General — 

Directory, support to, 182, 
Italian campaign, 177. 

Hohenlinden, Moreau's victory, 290. 

Hohenlohe, Prussian general, defeated 
at Jena, 361. 

Holland, monarchy under Louis Bon- 
aparte, 1806, 350. 
Dependency on France, complaint, 

435. 
Throne vacated, Holland annexed 
to France, 1810, 462-464. 

Honors, distribution of, enthronement 
of members of Bonaparte fam- 
ily, 350-352. 

Hougomont fortress, British defence, 
1815, 660. 

House of Lords, created 1814, 638-639. 

Houssaye incidents of Napoleon, 1815, 
653-655. 

Hundred Days of Napoleon, 1814, 635, 
675, 684. 



Imperial guard formed, 155. 

Inquisition, 173, 612. 

Invasion of France, 1813, and fall of 

Paris, 1814, 557-582. 
Inventions ignored by Napoleon, 402. 
Italy — 

Army, Napoleon in, 86, 103. 

Commander-in-chief, 132, 

136-138. 
Transfer order, evasion of, 
94-96. 
Campaigns of Napoleon, 87, 138- 

195, 278-290. 
Coalition against French republic, 

221-227. 
Monarchy under Napoleon, 335- 

338. 
Reforms by Napoleon, 410. 
Republic created, 171, 194, 196. 
Troops in Paris favorable to Napo- 
leon, 18th Brumaire, 242. 



Jaffa massacre, 213-215. 
Jena, battle of, 361, 403. 
Jomini, desertion to allied forces, 825. 



712 



INDEX 



Josephine, wife of Napoleon — 

Character and infidelity of, 127-134, 

191-193, 209-210. 
Coronation, 333. 
Death of. Napoleon's visit to Mal- 

maison, 643-644. 
Divorce, 130, 455-457. 
Fall of Napoleon, attitude of Jose- 
phine, 593-594. 
First meeting, 109-110. 
Italy, Josephine joins Napoleon in 

1796, 192. 
Marrac, chateau of, life at, 419-420. 
Marriage, 130, 132. 
Napoleon's return from Egypt, 234^ 

235. 
Son of Napoleon secretly shown to, 

468. 
Joubert, defeat of Austrians in Italy, 

167, 168. 
Jourdan, defeated by Archduke 

Charles, 224. 
Junot — 

Anecdotes of Napoleon, 79, 209, 292, 

345, 346, 393-395. 
Portugal, French invasion, 418, 427. 

K 

Katzbach, battle of, 530. 

Keralio, de, impression of Napoleon, 
30,33, 

Kleber, General, assassination in 
Egypt, 207, 216, 291. 

Knights of St. John, capture of Malta 
by Napoleon, 201-202. 

Kremlin of Moscow, Napoleon at, 485- 
488. 

Kulm, battle of, 530, 531. 

Kubusoff, Russian general, French re- 
treat from Moscow, 488, 492, 
495, 497. 



Labedoyere, Colonel — 
Execution of, 691. 
Napoleon's return from Elba, 
631. 
La Belle Alliance, British position in, 

1815, 658, 666. 
Lafayette provisional government, 
abdication of Napoleon, 1815, 
667, 669, 671. 



Lafayette, release of, 186. 

Lafon conspiracy, 503. 

Laine, opposition to Napoleon, 1813| 

559-560. 
Landshut, battle of, 440. 
Lannes, General — 

Death of, at Essling, 443-445. 
Hostilities of, 1805, 342-343. 
Italian campaign, 170. 
Montebello victory, 283. 
Laon, battle of, 574, 676. 
La Rothiere, battle of, 569. 
La Vendee, pacification of, 265, 275. 
Leclerc, invasion of St. Domingo, 

311. 
Lefebvre won over to Napoleon's side 

against Directory, 246, 247. 
Leghorn, seizure of English goods, 158. 
Legislative body of France — 

Abolition, creation of House of 

Lords, 1814, 638-639. 
Deposition of Napoleon by Senate, 

1814, 588. 
Opposition to Napoleon, 1813, 

560. 
Sieyes' plan of government, 1800, 
266. 
Leipsic, battle of, 534-541. 
Lepelletier Section insurrection, 105, 

107. 
Ligny, battle of, 651-653. 
Limited Monarchy under Louis XVIII, 

599, 611. 
" Little Corporal ' ' — nickname of Na- 
poleon, 146, 191, 420. 
Lodi — victory of Napoleon, 144-146. 
Lombardy — 

Invasion of, 146, 150. 

Italian republic formed, Napoleon 

as president, 329. 
Republic formed, 194. 
Lonato, battle of, 190. 
Loretto, shrines, 171. 
Louis XVIII, king of France — 

Called from England to France, 

1814, 596, 599. 
Consternation at return of Napo- 
leon from Elba, 626-627. 
Grovernment of, violations of the 
" Charter " and departure from 
France, 600, 601, 612-627. 
Limited monarchy, 599, 611. 



INDEX 



713 



Louisa, qaeen of Prussia, activity in 
war of 1806, 360-366, 384-385. 

Louisiana, sale to United States, 316, 
317. 

Lowe, Sir Hudson, treatment of Na- 
poleon at St. Helena, 679-701. 

Lucca, republic of, gift from Napo- 
leon to his sister, 338. 

Luneville, Peace of, 290. 

Liitzen, battle of, 510. 

Lyons, reception of Napoleon, 1799, 
232, 286; 1814, 632. 

M 

Macdonald, Marshal, abdication of 

Napoleon, 589, 592. 
Mack, Austrian general, campaign 

against French republic, 222. 
Madrid, riot, 425. [See also Spain.] 
Mahometans, Napoleon's policy in 

Egypt, 205-207. 
Maida, battle of, 349. 
Maitland, Captain, Napoleon on 

board the Bellerophon, 671- 

677. 
Malet conspiracy, 503. 
Malmaison — 

Anecdotes of Napoleon, 396-399. 
Death of Josephine — Napoleon's 

visit in 1815, 643-644. 
Napoleon at, after Waterloo, 670, 

671. 
Malta — 

British conquest, 292. 

Rupture of Peace of Amiens, 

312. 
Capture by Napoleon, 201-202. 
Mamelukes, rulers of Egypt, defeated 

by Napoleon, 200-205, 216. 
Mantua, siege and capitulation, 160- 

169. 
Marbeuf, General, friendship during 

boyhood of Napoleon, 24, 30. 
Marbois, mismanagement of finances, 

352-354. 
Marbot, General — 
Madrid riot, 425. 
Memoirs, 232, 233, 278, 347. 
Marengo, battle of, 278-287, 404. 
Marguerite, peasant at Brienne, visit 

to, 334. 



Maria Louisa, wife of Napoleon — 
Character of, 460-461, 468. 
Desertion of Napoleon, 606, 611, 

642, 690, 696. 
Empress Regent in 1814, betrayal 

of Napoleon, 564, 575. 
King of Rome born, 1811, 465-467. 
Marriage, 457-460, 472. 
Marmont, General — 
Leipsic, battle of, 535. 
Operations in 1814, 573-578. 
Treachery of, 590-591. 
Marrac, chateau of, anecdotes of 

life at, 1808, 419-420. 
Massena, General — 

Austrian campaign, 1809, Wa- 

gram, 440-448. 
Genoa, siege and evacuation, 279, 

282, 283. 
Italian campaign, 162, 163, 168, 175, 
176. 
Melas, defeated at Marengo, 280- 

286. 
Menou, General — 

English conquest of Egypt, 291. 
Revolt of the Sections, 106. 
Mery village. Napoleon at, 1814, 

573. 
Metternich, Austrian diplomat — 
Austrian mediation — policy, and 
interview with Napoleon, 524, 
554-562. 
Memoirs, 512-521, 645. 
Milan — 

Claim on Corsica, 4. 
French occupation of, 161-153. 
Josephine joins Napoleon, 1796, 192. 
Napoleon crowned King of Italy, 
336. 
Milan Decree, 416. 
Military of France, see Army. 
Miot de Melito — designs of Napoleon, 

181, 182. 
Modena, union with papal legations 

and Cisalpine, 195. 
Modena, Duke of, peace terms offered 

to Napoleon, 151, 152, 182. 
Monarchy, French — 
Empire, see that title. 
Limited monarchy under Louii 
XVIII, 599, 611. 
Montebello, Lannes's victory, 283. 



714 



INDEX 



Montenotte victory, 13&-140. 
Montmirail, battle of, 570. 
Mont St. Jean, battle of, 657. 
Moore, Sir J., retreat and death at 

Corunna, 432, 433. 
Moreau, General — 

Conspiracy against Napoleon, 319- 

328. 
Coup d'4tat of 18th Brumaire, 243. 
Death of, 532. 
Defeated by Archduke Charles, 

161, 162. 
Desertion of Napoleon, 525-532. 
Pichegru's arrest by Augereau, 

captured despatches, 183. 
Soissons surrender, 563. 
War with Austria, Hohenlinden 

victory, 279, 290. 
Moscow — 
Fire, 486. 
Retreat of French army, 482-499, 

504. 
Moulins, fall of Directory, 18th Bru- 
maire, 239-247. 
Muiron, saves life of Napoleon, 164. 
Murad Bey, Mameluke chief, defeat 

of, 204. 
Murat, General — 

Bourbon restoration, 1814, 624. 
Cavalry leader, qualities as, 155, 

640. 
Desertion and betrayal of Napoleon, 

507, 541, 562, 563. 
Discontent of, desire to become 

king, 426, 437, 461. 
Dresden, battle of, 1813, 529. 
Eylau, battle of, 381. 
Execution of, 691. 
Grand Duchy of Berg created, 1806, 

351. 
Italian colors conveyed to France, 

1796, 144, 147. 
Italian independence proclaimed 

by, failure of, 639-640, 
Madrid riot, 425. 
Moscow, advance and retreat, 483- 

499. 
Naples, king of, 437, 
Russians, defeat of, 1805, 343- 

345. 
Spain, campaign in, 1808, 419, 

421. 



Murat, General, continued — 

Turkish commander Mustapha, de- 
feat of, 219. 
Warsaw gayeties, 375-380. 

Mustapha defeated by Murat, 219. 

N 
Naples — 

Joseph Bonaparte as King of, 350. 
Murat succeeds Joseph as King, 437. 
Napoleon's policy in 1796, 157. 
Parthenopean republic proclaimed, 

223. 
Napoleon — 

Abdication, 589-594, 669-670. 
Ajaccio, see that title. 
Army of France, see that title. 
Arrest, overthrow of Robespierre, 

1794, 89-91. 
Birth and parentage, 17-22. 
Birth of King of Rome, 465-467. 
Boyhood, anecdotes of, 22-42. 
Brienne, see that title. 
Campaigns, see names of countries, 

Italy, Egypt, etc. 
Coalitions, see that title. 
Comparison with rulers, etc., of 

same period, 289, 423, 430, 654. 
Consulate, see that title. 
Coronation, 331-333 ; anniversary 

of, 346. 
Corsica, see that title. 
Death, 696-697. 
Deserted and betrayed, 587, 590- 

595. 
Directory, see that title. 
Education, 22-38. 
Elba, see that title. 
Empire, see that title. 
England, see that title. 
Europe, Napoleon's relations with, 

conditions existing at commence- 
ment of career, 121, 122. 
European monarchs, antagonism of, 

355-358. 
Exhaustion, 653-656, 666, 669-670, 

675. 
Family affairs 41, 65, 70, 87. 
French Revolution, see that title. 
Funeral at St. Helena, 1821, 697- 

698 ; Paris ceremonies, 1840, 700- 

703. 



INDEX 



715 



Napoleon, continued — 
Germany, see that title. 
Habits and characteristics, 196-199, 

294-295, 389-411, 683-694. 
High-water mark of power, 412. 
Honors, distribution, 350. 
Hundred days, 635, 675, 684. 
Hunting, 507. 
Illness, 530, 531, 694-696. 
Immortality, 18, 690-704. 
Italy, see that title. 
Jacobin denunciation of Napoleon, 

86. 
Josephine, see that title. 
Maria Louisa, see that title. 
Marriage with Josephine, 130-132, 

198; divorce, 455-457. 
Marriage with Maria Louisa, 457- 

460, 472. 
Paoli, see that title. 
Paris, see that title. 
Personal appearance, 1785, 39, 40; 

1795, 100; 1807, 386-;388; 1814, 

644-646. 
Plots against life of Napoleon, 197, 

288-289, 317-328, 451. 
Poverty and economy, 53, 54, 61. 
Prussia, see that title. 
Religious views at St. Helena, 687- 

690. 
Republic, see that title. 
Results of victories of Napoleon, 

413. 
Russia, see that title. 
St. Helena, see that title. 
Spain, see that title. 
Studies and writings, 34-45, 63, 54, 

65, 67, 72. 
Succession, speculations as to, 

451. 
Turkey, see that title. 
Valence, see that title. 
Will, 696-697. 
[See also names of countries, and 

political events.] 
Napoleon, son of Hortense and Louis 

Bonaparte, death of, 452, 463. 
Napoleon II, see Rome, king of. 
Narbonne, Count, French invasion of 

Russia, 1812, 478. 
Neipperg and Maria Louisa, 606, 643, 

690. 



Nelson, Lord — 

Death at Trafalgar, 342. 

Hatred of the French, 84. 

Italy, murder of Carraccioli, 226. 

Napoleon's Egyptian expedition, 
battle of the Nile, etc., 201, 208. 
Neuhoff,T. de. King of Corsica, 11-13. 
Ney, General — 

Abdication of Napoleon, 589-590. 

Dresden, battle of, 529. 

Campaign of 1814-15, battle of 
Waterloo, etc., 649, 651-669. 

Elchingen, battle of, 343. 

Execution of, 691. 

Germany, rising in, 1813, 510. 

Marshal, 332. 

Moscow retreat, 495, 496. 

Return of Napoleon from Elba, 627, 
632, 633. 

Russian campaign, 1807, 381, 383. 
Niemen — 

Interview with Czar of Russia, 1807, 
383. 

Passage across, 1812, 479, 481. 
Nile, battle of, 208. 
Norway, transference to Swedish rule, 
623. 



O 

Oldenburg taken by Napoleon, 472. 
Orezzo, Corsican general assembly, 

51, 52. 
Oudinot, Marshal, Memoirs, Erfurth 

conference, 428. 



Paoli, Corsican general — 

British protectorate plan for Cor- 
sica, 92. 
First meeting with Napoleon, 52. 
Independence struggle, 12-16. 
Quarrel and struggle with Napo- 
leon, 60-68, 198. 
Return to Corsica, 1790, after exile, 
51. 
"Parallel between Csesar, Cromwell, 
Monk, and Bonaparte," pam- 
phlet, 289. 
Paris — 

Bourbon restoration, 1814, 583-586. 



716 



ESTDEX 



Paris, continued — 

Coronation of Napoleon, 333. 
Exile of Napoleon from Corsica, 

61-63. 
FaU of, 1814, 576-581. 
Farewell of Napoleon to National 

Guard, 1814, 564. 
Funeral of Napoleon, 1840, 700-703. 
Military school, Napoleon at, 33-35. 
Reception of Napoleon, 1800, 287; 

return from Elba, 633. 
Eeturn of Napoleon from Russia, 
1812, 499-500, 504. 
Parma, Duke of, contribution to Na- 
poleon, 146, 147. 
Parthenopean republic proclaimed, 

223. 
Pasquier records, 560, 565. 
Peninsular war, 417^34. 
Permon family, early intimacy with 
Napoleon, 33-36, 64, 98-100, 113, 
337, 406. 
Phelippeaux, aid to Turks against 

Napoleon, 212. 
Pichegru — 

Banishment of, 183, 258. 

Brienne college, 30. 

Conspiracy against Napoleon, 318- 

328. 
Suicide of, 328. 
Piedmont, invasion of, 87, 138-143, 

146, 150. 
Pisa, war with Genoa over Corsica, 2. 
Pitt, W. — 

Administration and policy, 116, 117. 
Death of, 359. 
Plague among troops in Egypt, 217, 

218. 
Pleiswitz, armistice of, 511, 545, 554. 
Poland — 

Aid to Napoleon in Spain, etc., 374- 

377, 431. 
Independence, Napoleon's policy, 

372-377, 473, 480^81. 
Napoleon at Warsaw, 372-381. 
Princess Potocka, memoirs, 375- 

380. 
Russian possession — Vienna Con- 
gress, 1814, 622, 623. 
Walewski, Mme., see that title. 
Pope — 

Concordat sanctioned, 302-309. 



Pope, continued — 

Coronation of Napoleon, 333. 
Loosed from Fontainebleau, 1814, 

613. 
Quarrel with Napoleon, 337, 453- 

455; reconciliation, 508-509. 
Temporal power abolished, 222, 

453, 454, 558. 
Terms with Napoleon, 1796, viola- 
tion, 157-173. 
Portugal — 

English invasion, 1808, defeat of 

the French, 427. 
French invasion, 1808, 417-^18. 
Pouzet, General, death of, 444-445. 
Pozzo di Borgo — 

British occupation of Corsica, 92, 93. 
Enmity to Napoleon, 58-60. 
Prague, Congress of, 521-523,545. 
Presburg, treaty of, 347. 
Press censorship, 1814, 614. 
Provera, Austrian general — Italian 

defeat, 167-169, 
Prussia — 

Ally of France in war of 1812, 476. 
Berlin entered by Napoleon, 1806, 

366-369. 
Hanover ceded to, 357, 359, 363. 
Neutrality of, 1799, 277. 
Policy denounced, 363. 
Reorganization, 413^ 
Tilsit, Treaty of, 384. 
Vienna Congress, 1814, dispute as 
to division of territory, 620-623. 
War threatened, 1804, 357. 
War with Napoleon, 1806, over- 
throw of Prussian monarchy, 
battle of Jena, 359-366, 403. 
War of 1814-15, battle of Waterloo, 
etc., 566,648-671. 
Pultusk, battle of, 378, 383. 
Pyramids, battle of, 20^205. 

Q 

Quasdanovitch, Austrian general, de- 
feat of, 160. 
Quatre-Bras, battle of, 650-654. 

R 

Rampon, Napoleon's victory of Mon- 

tenotte, 139-140. 
Rastadt, Congress of, 330. 



INDEX 



m 



Ratisbonne, battle of, 440, 451. 
Red sea incident, 207- 
Reichenbach, treaty of, 516. 
Republic of France — 

Consulate, Directory, etc., see those 

titles. 
European leagues to restore Old 

Order in France, 115-121. 
First organized, 13th Vendemiaire, 

107. 
Reorganization, 256-273, 295-302. 
Rheims, battle of, 574. 
Rhine, see Confederation of the Rhine. 
Robespierre, Napoleon denounced as 

friend of, 71, 89, 90. 
Rocca, see Delia Rocca. 
Roman Catholic Church, see Church. 
Rome — 

Neapolitan army in, 222-223. 
Pope, see that title. 
Republic, 221-224. 
Rome, King of, Napoleon's son — 
Abdication of Napoleon in favor of, 

589-592. 
Austrian treatment of, palace of 

Schonbrunn, 611. 
Birth of, 465-467. 
Message to Napoleon at Elba, 

643. 
Terms of treaty of Fontainebleau 
violated by Allies, 606-607. 
Bose, J. H., Napoleon's seizures of 

British ships, 316. 
Ruffo, attack on republicans of Naples, 

treaty of peace, 225-226. 
Russia — 

Alexander, see that title. 
Alliance to Prussia, 358, 429. 
Bourbon restoration in France, 

1814, 583-586. 
Coalitions, 1799, 224; 1805,339-348; 
1813, 525-541; 1814-15, 566- 
648 
Continental system opposed, 470- 

478. 
Erfurth conference, 428. 
French invasion, Moscow, etc., 

1812, 470-504. 

Lukewarm support to Napoleon in 

war of 1809, 441, 472. 
Rising in Germany against France, 

1813, 507-614. 



Russia, continued — 

Tilsit, Treaty of, 1807, 383-385, 470- 

478. 
Vienna Congress, 1814, dispute as 

to division of territories, 620- 

623. 
War with Turkey on the Danube, 

473, 475, 481. 

S 

St. Cloud, coup d'etat of 18th Bru- 
maire, 241-255. 

St. Cyr, Dresden defence and Leipsic 
defeat, 1813, 527, 535. 

Saint-Denis school, visit to, 561. 

St. Dizier, battle of, 568, 577. 

St. Domiugo, negro revolt, failure 
of French expedition, 310. 

St. Helena, Napoleon's exile — 
British deception, 672-676. 
Death and funeral of Napoleon, 

696-698. 
Farewell of Napoleon at Malmaisoa, 

671. 
Life at St. Helena, 679-699. 
Negotiations for removal of Na- 
poleon from Elba, 1814, 607, 
608. 

St. Jean, battle of, 657. 

St. Jean d'Acre, siege of, 215. 

Salamanca, battle of, 522. 

Salicetti, intimacy with Napoleon, 
71, 77, 87, 89, 91, 93, 98, 99. 

Sambuccio, Corsican leader, organ- 
ization of village confedera- 
tion, 2. 

Sampiero, Corsican leader, 5-8, 692. 

San Marino, rights of, respected by 
Napoleon, 173. 

Sardinia, French invasion of, 66, 138- 
143. 

Saxony — 

Desertion to enemies of Napoleon, 

1813, 537. 
Prussian possession, Vienna Con- 
gress, 1814, 622, 623. 

Saxony, Queen of, reproaches Metter- 
nich for deserting Napoleon, 
546. 

Scherer, in command of army of 
Italy, succeeded by Napoleon, 
135, 136. 



71^ 



IHDBX 



Scbwarzenberg, Austrian Prince — 
Dresden hostilities, 1813, 527,529, 

534, 536. 
Invasion of France, 1814, 566-577. 
Paris fete in honor of Napoleon 
and Maria Louisa, 460. 
Scotchman's story of Napoleon at 

Elba, 608-610. 
Sebastiani, General — 

Military situation, 1813, 524. 
Turkey refuses to join coalition 
against France, 415. 
Sections, revolt and disarmament, 105- 

109. 
Segur — 

Memoirs of Napoleon, 341. 
Wounded in Spain, 431. 
Seine overflow, Napoleon's embank- 
ment, 410. 
Semonville, French commissioner, — 
Napoleon's defence of France in 
Corsica, 68. 
Senate, French — 

Deposition of Napoleon, 1814, 588. 
Sieyes' plan of government, 1800, 
266. 
Serurier, Italian campaign, 169, 170. 
Sheridan, R. B., speech in British 

House of Commons, 614. 
Sieyes' new constitution after over- 
throw of Directory, 237-253, 
265-270. 
Smolensk, advance on, 482. 
Smith, Sir S., aid to Arabs against 

Napoleon, 212, 215, 220. 
Social conditions in France — 
Reform of, 295. 
Thellusson ball, 132-134. 
Soissons surrender — treachery of 

Moreau, 573. 
Sommo Sierra mountain pass, block- 
ade by Spanish bands, 431. 
Spain — 

Alliance with France violated, 1807, 

417. 
Bonaparte, Joseph, see that title. 
Ferdinand, see that title. 
French invasion, 1807-8, 41^-434. 
Crown surrendered to Napoleon, 

419-424. 
Progress of the war, neglect of 
Napoleon, 452, 455. 



Spain, continued — 

French invasion, cont'd — 

Unpopularity of the war in 
France, 437. 
Improvements by Napoleon, 410. 
Internal disputes, Godoy and Ferdi- 
nand, 418-421. 
Madrid, riot, 425. 

Reorganization of government by 
Napoleon, complaint of Joseph 
Bonaparte, 1809, 435. 
Stael, Mme. de, banishment of, 399, 

408,414 
" Supper of Beaucaire," pamphlet by 

Napoleon, 65, 72. 
Suwarow, Russian general, victories 

in Italy, 224. 
Sweden — 

Bernadotte, see that title. 
Coalition of 1805 against France, 339. 
Switzerland, Helvetic republic pro- 
claimed, 222. 
Syria, invasion of, 213. 



Talleyrand, French diplomat — 

Betrayal of Napoleon and conspir- 
acy against, 437-439, 552, 579. 
Bourbon restoration, abdication of 

Napoleon, 1814, 583-588. 
Death of, 688. 
Execution of Duke d'Enghien, 321- 

327. 
Germany, reorganization, 330. 
Turkish mission proposal, 200. 
Vienna Congress, 1814, 620-623. 
Warsaw gayeties, 377. 
Tallien, Mme., character of, 127, 128, 

130, 134. 
Tariff, see Continental system. 
Taxation reforms during Consulate, 

261-262, 271. 
Thames embankment. Napoleon's sug- 
gestion, 410. 
Thellusson ball, society conditions, 

132-1.34. 
Theodore, King of Corsica, 11-13. 
Theosophy, sect, 260. 
Thiebault. Memoirs of, 108, 110. 434,645. 
Tilsit, Treaty of, 1807, 383-385. 

Continental system supported by 
Russia, 385; violation, 470-478. 



UUN 2 ; m 



INDEX 



719 



Tolentino, treaty of, 1797, 173. 
Toulon, siege of, military genius of 

Napoleon, 72-83. 
Toussaiut L'Ouverture — 

Revolt of St. Domingo against 

France, 311. 
Treatment of, by Napoleon, 408. 
Trafalgar, battle of, 342. 
Transpadane republic established, 194. 
Turkey — 

Coalition, refusal to join in, 1807,415. 
Defeated by Napoleon in Egypt, 

212-220. 
Invasion of Corsica, 6. 
Military system reorganized, 103, 

104. 
War with Russia on the Danube, 
473, 475, 481. 
Turreau, wife of, battle incident, 92. 
Tyrolese revolt, 450. 

U 
Ulm campaign, 341. 
Undaunted, British ship, conveyance 

of Napoleon to Elba, 601, 604-605. 
United States, sale of Louisiana to, 

316, 317. 
Ushant, Napoleon's last sight of 

France, 678, 679. 



Valeggio, narrovir escape of Napoleon 
from Austrians, 154. 

Valence — 

Napoleon joins regiment of La 

Fere, social life, etc., 35. 
National oath ceremonies, 1791, 55. 
Reception of Napoleon, 1799, 233. 

Valette, General, troops condemned 
by Napoleon, 189. 

Valladolid, Napoleon's ride to Ba- 
yonne, 1809, 433, 434. 

Vandamme, defeated at Kulm,530, 531. 

Vannina, wife of Sampiero, 6, 7. 

Vaubois, defeat of, 162, 166. 

Vendemiaire [13th] Napoleon acting 
chief in, 107. 

Venice, Napoleon's policy, disturb- 
ances in Venetia, 155, 156, 178- 
180. 

Victor, General, captured by Prus- 
sians, 379. 



Vienna — 

Fall of, 1809, 441. 

Marriage of Napoleon and Maria 
Louisa by proxy, 1810, 468. 
Vienna Congress, 620-«26. 

Consternation at return of Napoleon 

from Elba, 626, 639. 
Dispute between four powers, 620- 
623. 
Vienna, Treaty of, 357, 472. 
Villeneuve, Admiral, failure of expe- 
dition to England, 340. 
Vimeiro, battle of, 427. 
Vincentello, Corsican struggle, 3, 4. 
Vitebsk, delay at, war of 1812, 481, 482. 
Vittolo, Corsican struggle, 8. 
Vittoria, battle of, 430, 522. 

W 

Wagram, battle of, 447-448. 
Walewski, Mme., favorite of Napoleon, 
378-383. 
Visit to Napoleon at Fontainebleau, 
1814, 594. 
Warsaw — 

Grand Duchy of, 374, 472, 480. 
Napoleon at, 1806-7, 372-381. 
Waterloo, battle of, f)60-667. 

Regrets at St. Helena, 634-685. 
Wellington, Duke of — 

Canova's statue of Napoleon, anec- 
dote, 368. 
Invasion of France, 1814, 566. 
Napoleon's hatred of, 685. 
Vimeiro, battle of, 427. 
Waterloo, battle of, Blucher's co- 
operation in war of 1814-15, 
648-671. 
Westphalia, monarchy under Jerome 
Bonaparte, 351, 384. 
Napoleon's policy and advice to 

Jerome, 412, 413. 
Old Order restored, 1814, 612, 613. 
Whitworth, Lord, British ambassador 

to Paris, 1804, 313. 
Wilna, delay at — French invasion of 

Russia, 1812, 481. 
Wolseley, Lord, opinion of Napoleon, 

411. 
Wurmser, Austrian general, defeated 
by Napoleon, 159-169. 



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